K., Paperback

From the internationally acclaimed author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony comes one of the most significant books in recent years on a writer of perennial interest-a virtuoso interpretation of the work of Franz Kafka.

What are Kafka's fictions about? Are they dreams? Allegories? Symbols? Countless answers have been offered, but the essential mystery remains intact. Setting out on his own exploration, Roberto Calasso enters the flow, the tortuous movement, the physiology of Kafka's work to discover why K. and Josef K.-the protagonists of The Castle and The Trial-are so radically different from any other character in the history of the novel, and to determine who, in the end, is K. The culmination of Calasso's lifelong fascination with Kafka's work, K. is also an unprecedented consideration of the mystery of Kafka himself.

About the Author:

Born in Florence, Roberto Calasso lives in Milan, where he is publisher of Adelphi. He is the author of The Ruin of Kasch; The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, which was the winner of France's Prix Veillon and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger; Ka; Literature and the Gods; and The Forty-Nine Steps.