Amerika by Franz Kafka Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Amerika
Book Review: kafka's first book--pure genius
Summary: 5 Stars
I came across Kafka's first novel after i had finished his short fiction, which impressed me. this story isn't quite what i expected. while stilling holding onto the grimmness that is signature kafka, it manages to use humor in a way i hadn't seen kafka do in his shorter works. "The Stoker", the story/chapter that begins the book is what Dickens would have done if he had been a better writer. Karl's adventures remind me of Huck Finn's, but without a Jim. Until the last chapter, where the story spirals away from what it had been into substandard work. No, it isn't kafka's best work, but it is still a great piece of art.Book Review: like dickens, only by kafka
Summary: 2 Stars
This first novel is incomplete and was never intended for publication. It isn't funny, it isn't fun, and it certainly isn't very original. Kafka wrote it as an exercise and that is all it should be. Upon reading it carefully, I can only conclude that perhaps it should not have been published as it simply doesn't stand up to this master's best work. As such it is really only of interest to scholars.
Basically, it follows the journey through America of a clueless twit into a variety of catastrophic misadventures, from getting a maid pregnant without even understanding he was committing a sexual act to losing job after job in New York and environs. While it does have some of the bizarre atmospherics that Kafka later perfected, the themes in it are not of the timeless horror and angst that later marked Kafka as a peculiar genius.
Skip it and go on to The Trial or The Castle. If you don't know Kafka, start with Metamorphosis.