From the internationally acclaimed author of The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony comes one of the most significant books in recent years on a writer of perennial interesta virtuoso interpretation of the work of Franz Kafka.What are Kafkas fictions about? Are they dreams? Allegories? Symbols? Countless answers have been offered, but the essential mystery remains intact. Setting out on his own exploration, Roberto Calasso enters the flow, the tortuous movement, the physiology of Kafkas work to discover why K. and Josef K.the protagonists of The Castle and The Trialare so radically different from any other character in the history of the novel, and to determine who, in the end, is K. The culmination of Calassos lifelong fascination with Kafkas work, K. is also an unprecedented consideration of the mystery of Kafka himself.From the Trade Paperback edition.