Kafka's Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing [Hardcover]

John Zilcosky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 23, 2002

In 1916, Kafka writes of The Sugar Baron, a dime-store colonial adventure novel, "[it] affects me so deeply that I feel it is about myself, or as if it were the book of rules for my life." John Zilcosky reveals that this perhaps surprising statement-made by the sedentary, Prague-bound poet of modern isolation-is part of a network of remarks that exemplify Kafka's ongoing preoccupation with popular travel writing, exotic fantasy, and travel technology. Taking this biographical peculiarity as a starting point, Kafka's Travels elegantly re-reads Kafka's major works (Amerika, The Trial, In the Penal Colony, The Castle) through the lens of fin de siècle travel culture. Making use of previously unexplored literary and cultural materials-travel diaries, train schedules, tour guides, adventure novels-Zilcosky argues that Kafka's uniquely modern metaphorics of alienation emerge out of the author's complex encounter with the utopian travel discourses of his day. The book offers a lucid, readable introduction into Kafka's life and work, and sophisticated analysis of Kafka' s major writings in relation to contemporary literary theory.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The thrust and execution of the book make the project altogether fascinating. [Zilcosky is] a splendid young talent." --Stanley Corngold, Princeton University


"John Zilcosky multiplies maps, routes, and guides to Kafka in his wonderfully original and astute Kafka's Travels. He is the first critic to take stock of Kafka's fascination with travel and adventure literature and the popular fin de siècle exoticism so gaudily displayed in the Little Green Books series. Zilcosky brilliantly situates Kafka in a popular culture that exhibits traits of perversity, sadism, and masochism. Kafka's peculiar modernism extends popular fictions of empire and their attendant colonialist or imperialist desires, while opening a whole new vista on a writing that turns into an even more dangerous adventure, leading to polymorphous intercourse and endless travels to our darker (in)side." - Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania

"Postcolonial thinking may have made possible the conception of this book, but there's nothing trendy about Zilcosky's probing, magisterial study. In an energetic, jargon-free style he stays firmly inside Kafka's world, reading Kafka's favorite books-popular travel books as well as Goethe and Flaubert-and weaving new relational patterns between Kafka's texts and their late imperial contexts." - James Rolleston, Duke University

"John Zilcosky presents us with an unexpected Kafka: a passionate reader of forgotten texts, an armchair traveler, an ironic exoticist. His penetrating and supple readings explore the fascination, the attraction, and the danger that travel held for Kafka's imagination, producing learned and insightful interpretations of texts such as the America novel and The Trial along the way. With this book Zilcosky joins the ranks of Kafka's most illuminating critics." - David E. Wellbery, LeRoy T. and Margaret Deffenbaugh Carlson University Professor Germanic Studies, Comparative Literature, and the College University of Chicago

"Is there anything left to discover in the crowded field of Kafka studies? John Zilcosky's bold, well-written and -documented study of Kafka's preoccupation with travel and travel writing reverses our picture of the Prague writer as a sedentary bureaucrat. Exploring Kafka's lifelong fascination with the exotic provides new and stunning insights into the imagination of the
up0author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial. Zilcosky is an authoritative guide." - Frank Trommler, Professor of German & Comparative Literature, University of Pennsylvania.

"The thrust and execution of the book make the project altogether fascinating. [Zilcosky is] a splendid young talent." - Stanley Corngold, Princeton University

"John Zilcosky offers an innovative and utterly compelling interpretation of Kafka as an imaginary (post)colonial traveler. Drawing on scrupulously attentive readings of Kafka's literary and autobiographical texts as well as the most recent work in postcolonial studies, Zilcosky shows how this most sedentary of modernist writers (who never left Europe and had trouble even leaving Prague) traveled the four corners of the globe through his interests in travel literature, children's stories, and contemporary journalism." - Mark M. Anderson, Chair, Dept. of Germanic Languages, Columbia University

From the Publisher

"The thrust and execution of this book make the project altogether fascinating. [Zilcosky is] a splendid young talent."
—Stanley Corngold, Princeton University

"Postcolonial thinking may have made possible the conception of this book, but there’s nothing trendy about Zilcosky’s probing, magisterial study."
—James Rolleston, Duke University

"Zilcosky brilliantly situates Kafka in a popular culture that exhibits traits of perversity, sadism, and masochism."
—Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania

"With this book Zilcosky joins the ranks of Kafka’s most illuminating critics."
—David E. Wellbery, University of Chicago

"John Zilcosky’s bold, well written and documented study of Kafka’s preoccupation with travel and travel writing reverses our picture of the Prague writer as a sedentary bureaucrat."
—Frank Trommler, University of Pennsylvania

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 284 pages
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (November 23, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312232810
• ISBN-13: 978-0312232818
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,970,229 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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