Franz Kafka
America

In 1927, three years after Franz Kafka's death, the novel "America" was published by the author's friend and official biographer Max Brod.

The protagonist of the novel, Karl Rossmann, is forced to leave his country and relocate to America because he was seduced by a maid who then became pregnant.

After meeting on the ship to New York with a stoker, a typical Kafkaesque character who for a moment almost seems to be the true protagonist of the novel, Karl is hosted at the home of a wealthy uncle; however, he is soon kicked out and forced to first find work in a hotel and subsequently in the home of a capricious and elderly singer, along with two vagabonds he had met earlier.

This novel contains numerous elements recurrent in Kafka's writings: from the innate and inescapable sense of guilt of the protagonist which becomes an absolute condition of humanity, to the impossibility for man to reach his objectives, to achieve what he desires because he is overwhelmed by the cruel and indifferent force of chance and by laws incomprehensible to him.

"America" seems to have something different, if not more, compared to Kafka's most famous works; in this novel, indeed, the Prague-born author appears to bring to the everyday what characterizes his literary efforts, placing it in a "current" scenario, well described and fixed in time but especially in space. We are not in the isolated village of "The Castle" nor in the dark, cold, grey, and squalid places of "The Trial", but in much brighter and more worldly places, populated by a lively and varied humanity: from the aforementioned stoker, to senators, businessmen, waiters, head cooks, singers, vagabonds, all with a behavior more or less honest or dishonest, but certainly deeply characterized, starting from their physical appearance.

What is probably "more" in this Kafka novel can indeed be traced precisely to the place the German-speaking author set it in, America, a land of opportunity, ideal for "starting a new life", escaping shame, and why not, the sense of guilt; but Kafka knows that especially the last of these things is impossible and almost with a sarcasm that could be defined as sadistic, the author seems to make America the incarnation of human illusions. Karl indeed moves through a series of seemingly normal, everyday events that follow one another as if guided by that mysterious omnipresent force in the Kafkaesque canon, which can be indifferently called "chance," "fate," "system," or "divine law."