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America

First edition in English, second issue of Franz Kafka's America

Franz Kafka; translated by Edwin Muir and Willa Muir ⦗Willa Anderson⦘; afterword by Max Brod
First edition in English. 8vo. Pp. xii, 300, [4 (publisher's adverts)]. Publisher's maroon cloth, lettered in black to spine. Top edge stained yellow. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir, with an Introductory Note by Edwin Muir and an Afterword by Kafka's friend and literary executor, Max Brod. First English-language edition, the presumed second issue with title stamped in black.
The third in the author's "Trilogie der Einsamkeit" [Trilogy of Loneliness], according to Brod, to be published, yet the first to be penned. Also known as Der Verschollene or The Man Who Disappeared, it was originally issued in 1927 by Kurt Wolff Verlag, Munich. It is thought to have been inspired by the apocryphal story of one of Kafka's cousins who at the tender age of sixteen was shipped off to America, after impregnating the family maid. In Kafka's version of events, seventeen-year-old Karl Rossman leads a peripatetic life in the land of opportunity amid extremes of wealth and poverty with his innocence inviting constant exploitation.
Though the author never visited the country, his picaresque tale does capture the very 'idea' of America in its uncanny depiction of an ever-changing landscape of oversized constructs, peopled by inhabitants in thrall to speed and technology. The uncompleted manuscript comes full circle with the classic Kafka trope of the scorned individual pleading his innocence in front of remote and mysterious figures of authority.
[Mellown D32]
edition
first in English
format
hardback
publisher
George Routledge & Sons Ltd
published in
London
publication year
1938
ISBN
not assigned
pagination
300 pages
width × height
​14 × ​19.5 cm
genre
literary fiction
language
English
binding style
cloth
binding state
original binding
remark
missing jacket
condition
near fine
GBP£ ​325
EUR€ ​389
USD$ ​429
ref.92U 2YC