Amerika

by Franz Kafka

1927 · 299 pages

german fiction
immigrants in fiction
adaptations
social conditions
young men
classic literature

Keep track of it on your own bookshelf.

About this book

From the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial and one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, his first—and funniest—novel.

Amerika tells the story of the young Karl Rossmann who, after an incident involving a housemaid, is banished by his parents to America. Expected to redeem himself in this magical land of opportunity, young Karl is swept up instead in a whirlwind of dizzying reversals, strange escapades, and picaresque adventures.

Kafka began writing what he had entitled Der Verschollene (The Missing Person) in 1912 and wrote the last completed chapter in 1914. But it wasn’t until 1927, three years after his death, that Max Brod, Kafka’s friend and literary executor, edited the unfinished manuscript and published it as Amerika.

Quotes by Franz Kafka

From Wikiquote

Now the Sirens have a still more fatal weapon than their song, namely their silence... Someone might possibly have escaped from their singing; but from their silence, certainly never.
Plenty of hope — for God — no end of hope — only not for us.
Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.