Amerika

by Franz Kafka

Sixteen-year-old Karl Roßmann is shipped off to America by his parents after a housemaid's scandal, and lands in a bewildering New York where a chance reunion with a wealthy uncle briefly promises security before spiraling into exploitation, betrayal, and servitude among con men and capricious employers. Kafka's unfinished first novel follows Karl's increasingly absurd and dreamlike odyssey across the American landscape, culminating in his recruitment by the boundlessly welcoming, mysterious Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. Its spare, deliberate German prose rewards advanced learners in our sentence-level side-by-side format.