Franz Kafka

This is a study of Kafka's works. He discusses the short fiction in one chapter and the letters to Felice in another. Two final chapters are dedicated to The Trial and The Castle. The author has a good prose style and lucid thinking, and the book contains some genuine insights. The distracting element, for me anyway, was the constant reference to Gnosticism and Manicheaism. This interpretation, of which Kafka most likely had no intention, is a little much. Nevertheless, the author is persuasive if one is inclined to that sort of thing. His refutation of mainstream critics who see The Castle as a novel of religious allegory, similar to Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, is on target.