Title: Kafka's travels : exoticism, colonialism, and the traffic of writing /
Authors: Zilcosky, John
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan,
Year: 2003
Subjects: Kafka, Franz, Travel.; Kafka, Franz, Criticism and interpretation.
Abstract: "In 1916, Kafka writes of The Sugar Baron, a dime-store colonial adventure novel, "[it] affects me so deeply that I feel it is about myself, or as if it were the book of rules for my life." John Zilcosky reveals that this perhaps surprising statement - made by the sedentary, Prague-bound poet of modern isolation - is part of a network of remarks that exemplify Kafka's ongoing preoccupation with popular travel writing, exotic fantasy, and travel technology. Taking this biographical peculiarity as a starting point, Kafka's Travels elegantly re-reads Kafka's major works (Amerika, The Trial, In the Penal Colony, The Castle) through the lens of fin de siecle travel culture.
Contents: Kafka's travels? -- Transcending the exotic: nostalgia, exoticism, and Kafka's early travel novel, "Richard and Samuel" -- The "America" novel: learning how to get lost -- Traveling at home: "The trial" and the exotic "Heimat" -- Savage travel: sadism and masochism in Kafka's "Penal colony" -- Of sugar barons and land surveyors: colonial visions in Schaffstein's "Little green books" and "The castle" -- The traffic of writing: technologies of intercourse in the "Letters to Milena" -- Travel, death, and the exotic voyage home: "The hunter Gracchus" -- Kafka's final journey.