And yet Kafka recognised the problem of identity and locating a home in the vastness of America and related it to living in the bureaucratic society of German-occupied Prague alienation, after all, is universal. Kafka never set foot in America and so his vision of the country is that of a land dreamt up from deep inside the heart of old world Europe. Karl remains locked in this Sisyphean trek across an imagined America even as the novel closes. Job after job falls through, leaving Karl headed off in one direction after another in a never-ending quest for a place to settle and a job that pays his way. These are not people to be trusted as Karl soon discovers and his journey continues alone as he moves from one position of vulnerability to the next, barely scraping a living as he does so. It is a relationship that is destined not to last and finding himself on the road once more, Karl falls in with a pair of vagrants named Robinson and Delamarche. Here he finds refuge but also finds his wings clipped by his relative, who wishes to keep his nephew close. Having fled his home in disgrace following an unacceptable liaison, the young man is all but penniless and is fortunate to fall into the hands, in an implausible turn of fate that will not surprise Kafka readers, of his wealthy uncle. Karl Rossman – a teenager from Europe – makes his way from the harbour at New York across the country on a journey to Oklahoma. The plot is fairly simple in outline, following the misadventures of a young immigrant to America.

Amerika franz kafka