The Castle

November 4, 2013
Kafka never finished The Castle, his final novel. What he did complete is a vision of a relentlessly dystopian realm where people waste lives in service of a faceless, inhuman bureaucracy whose purpose is obscure, if indeed a purpose exists at all. Summoned to an isolated village, the land surveyor K. finds himself shunned by villagers and unable to contact his erstwhile employer, who is concealed within a forbidding castle. Seeking shelter in a hostile community, K. struggles to find some means to contact his employer, stymied at all turns by a society determined to remain subservient to an obstructive system of rules; progress appears to be foredoomed and escape is impossible. Mairowitz, who has previously adapted Kafka for the stage, does a masterful job of translating the work from its original language and formatting it into a comic book. Artist Jaromír 99’s dark and dreamlike art, detailed in some places, abstract in others, reflects the hallucinatory world of shadows and illusions K. wanders through. Too many graphic novel adaptations of classic literature just break down the stories into digestible panels; this is a powerful interpretation of Kafka’s timeless themes.

George Guidall's reading is both disconcerting and comforting. Comforting, because he reads as Kafka surely wrote, with all the assurance and bravado that K, his protagonist, shows throughout. Disconcerting because, also like K, we haven't the slightest idea what is happening. As K wanders between the village and the inn, struggling to contact someone from the castle, neither he nor we can make sense of the difficulties he encounters. The listener, however, is swept along by the magic of the reader. "Guidall understands," we tell ourselves. He is in control, and, because he is, we can accept that we are not. The characters--Barnabas, the landlady, Frieda--dance in his vocal grip and become transparent vehicles of Kafka's sarcasm and humor. What fun. The Castle, like life, is as impenetrable as ever, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter. Guidall's reading is so faithful to Kafka that the book becomes less a puzzle than a mirror, illuminating the world around us. P.E.F. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award. (c) AudioFile 2001, Portland, Maine