Amerika: A New Translation by Mark Harman Based on the Restored Text

Franz Kafka

Feb 2009 · Ascent Audio · Narrated by George Guidall

About this audiobook

A Brilliant new translation of the great writer’s least Kafkaesque novel, based on a German-language text that was produced by a team of international scholars and that is more faithful to Kafka’s original manuscript than anything we have had before.

With the same expert balance of precision and nuance that marked his translation of Kafka’s The Castle, the award-winning translator Mark Harman now restores the humor and particularity of language to Amerika. Here is the story of seventeen-year-old Karl Rossman, who, following a scandal involving a housemaid, is banished by his parents to America. With unquenchable optimism and in the company of two comic-sinister companions, he throws himself into misadventure after misadventure, eventually landing in Oklahoma, where a career in the theater beckons.

Like much of Kafka’s work, Amerika remained unfinished at the time of his death. Though we can never know how Kafka planned to end the novel, Mark Harman’s superb translation allows us to appreciate as closely as possible, what Kafka did commit to the page.

About the author

Franz Kafka -- July 3, 1883 - June 3, 1924 Franz Kafka was born to middle-class Jewish parents in Prague, Czechoslovakia on July 3, 1883. He received a law degree at the University of Prague. After performing an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts, he obtained a position in the workman's compensation division of the Austrian government. Always neurotic, insecure, and filled with a sense of inadequacy, his writing is a search for personal fulfillment and understanding. He wrote very slowly and deliberately, publishing very little in his lifetime. At his death he asked a close friend to burn his remaining manuscripts, but the friend refused the request. Instead the friend arranged for publication Kafka's longer stories, which have since brought him worldwide fame and have influenced many contemporary writers. His works include The Metamorphosis, The Castle, The Trial, and Amerika. Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB) in August 1917. As his disease progressed, his throat became affected by the TB and he could not eat regularly because it was painful. He died from starvation in a sanatorium in Kierling, near Vienna, after admitting himself for treatment there on April 10, 1924. He died on June 3 at the age of 40. George Guidall is one of the most prolific narrators of audiobooks in the world. He has recorded nearly 650 unabridged novels, everything from "Crime and Punishment" and "The Iliad" to "Snow Falling on Cedars." He began his career as an actor, appearing on Broadway and touring Europe with Helen Hayes in the "Glass Menagerie," " Miracle Worker" and "The Skin of Our Teeth." He received an Obie Award for Best Performance Off-Broadway, and has continued his performances in theater for over 40 years. Guidall has also appeared on television, with roles on the soap "One Life to Live" and "Law and Order," and in movies such as "Malcolm X" and "Tales from the Darkside." His first job reading audiobooks was for the Library of Congress' American Foundation for the Blinds' Talking Books. Since then he has won the most prestigious Audiobook Award, the Audie Award, for Best Unabridged Narration of a novel for his recording of John Irving's "A Widow for One Year." He won the Audie again in 2000 for Wally Lamb's "I Know This Much is True."