Customer Reviews

America (Spanish Edition)

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Kafka drives the reader crazy by this epic narration about the adventures of Karl, an adolescent sent to America at the beginning of XX century. While escaping from a stupid love affair Karl is to meet his uncle who will receive him at home and will push him into the secrets of accounting.
Thanks to one of Kafka's eternal "malentendus" Karl is sent to the immigrant's arena and he has to live on his own. Almost penniless, his sole possessions are his battered trunk and an old photography of his parents.
One can't but feel empathy and tenderness for young Karl. Fired by his uncle who was supposed to protect him, Karl has to cope with two drunkards (an Irish and a French) who attempt by all means to abuse of his innocence by promising him a job in the west coast.
Karl then finds a humble place at a big hotel. He is in charge of one of the numerous elevators and works almost sixteen hours a day just to be dismissed due to a new misunderstanding.
At times hilariously, the novel crudely describes the situation of many Europeans who might have dreamed of America as an oasis to later realize they were just joined as a little part of an enormous and unspeakable machine.

Poor 16 year old Karl is send to America,
because he has been seduced by a maid.
Hardly a reward. In America he finds work
at the Hotel Occidental. At the hotel he
is in charge of one of the 30 elevators.
And hopes to climb to the top of this
new world, however meagre his
startposition seems.

Kafka masterly describes it all
with gallows humor spiked with desperation.
Making it a hilarious read.
The sentences just stand there on the page
and you can hardly do anything but laugh.
E.g.: The kitchen chef told Karl
he had worked in the Golden Goose in Prague.
Karl then told the kitchen chef that
the Golden Goose had been torn down.
And: Karl reasoned that it would have
been insane to turn down a nice
position as piccolo just because he
had finished the first five years
of the Gymnasium school. Here
in America such formal education would
rather be something to be ashamed of.

When people hear the term Kafkan or Kafkaesque,
I guess most people would think of
a dark world,where isolated, guilt-ridden
people face problems that cannot be escaped
or resolved.
Maybe this is also such a story,
but it is also very, very funny.

-Simon