8vo (125 x 189 mm). 12 ff., 152 pp. Original blue cloth, spine and front cover lettered in gilt, fore and bottom edges untrimmed, marbled dust jacket. Mild fading to dustjacket spine as usual, jacket unclipped, panels and flaps bright, an unusually clean copy in a near-fine jacket.

Although Kafka seemed to consider The Castle a failure, critics have since recognized it as one of the great novels of the 20th century and a key work in modernist literature. Composed between 1922 and 1924, it is the story of K, a man who claims to be a Land Surveyor sent by someone unknown, and for purposes unknown, to the Castle, itself a place unknown. Unfinished at the time of Kafka's death in 1924, the manuscript was edited for publication by Kafka's friend and literary executor, Max Brod, against the author's wishes to burn all his writings. This volume concludes with an essay by Brod. It was first published in German as Das Schloss (1926).