Amerika

Franz Kafka · 1883–1924 · Czechia (Bohemia)

Originally Der Verschollene (German)

Why it matters

Sixteen-year-old Karl Rossmann is shipped off to an America he can't parse, drifting through absurd hierarchies of hotels, offices, and an open-air theater that may hire everyone alive. Kafka's unfinished first novel, oddly his most hopeful: nothing here has caught up with its hero yet.

At a glance

Episodic and unfinished, but its individual scenes read more plainly than Kafka's other novels.