Amerika (Kafka novel)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

</td></tr> <tr><th>Original title (if not in English)</th><td>Der Verschollene</td></tr><tr><th>Country</th><td>Germany</td></tr><tr><th>Language</th><td>German</td></tr><tr><th>Genre(s)</th><td>Novel</td></tr> <tr><th>Media Type</th><td>Print (Hardback & Paperback)</td></tr><tr><th>ISBN</th><td>NA</td></tr>

**Amerika**
Author	Franz Kafka
Publisher	Kurt Wolff
Released	1927 (orig. German)

Amerika, also known as Der Verschollene or The Man Who Disappeared, was the incomplete first novel of author Franz Kafka, published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled The Stoker.

1 Plot summary
2 Major themes
3 Allusions/references to other works
4 Adaptations
5 External links

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

It describes the bizarre wanderings of a seventeen-year-old European emigrant named Karl Rossman in the United States, who was forced to go to New York as a punishment for being seduced by a maid and travel there to meet and work with his uncle.

Fired and abandoned by his uncle and without any money in a strange world, he finds a job as an elevator operator working at the huge Hotel Occidental.

[edit] Major themes

The novel is more explicitly humorous and slightly more realistic (except in the last chapter) than most of Kafka's works, but it shares the same motifs of an oppressive and intangible system putting the protagonist repeatedly in bizarre situations. Specifically, within Amerika, a scorned individual often must plead his innocence in front of remote and mysterious figures of authority

[edit] Allusions/references to other works

Amerika has certain similarities with Charles Dickens' David Copperfield (1850), of which Kafka said Amerika is "sheer imitation", and represents a unique interpretation of the Bildungsroman genre.

[edit] Adaptations

The novel was adapted for the screen as the film Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations) by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet in 1984.

[edit] External links

Lost in America a book review by John Zilcosky published in The New Republic, August 18 2003.
Past Productions: Amerika American Repertory Theatre's stage production by Gideon Lester, after the novel by Franz Kafka. Contains many links of interest at the bottom of the page.