it seemed to K. as if at last those people had broken of all relations with him, and as if now in reality he were freer than he had ever been, and at liberty to wait here in this place usually forbidden to him as long as he desired, and had won a freedom such as hardly anybody else had ever succeeded in winning, and as if nobody could dare to touch him or drive him away, or even speak to him; but - this conviction was at least equally strong - as if at the same time there was nothing more senseless, nothing more hopeless than his freedom, this waiting, this inviolability.

It's rare to read a book as superb as The Castle. I loved it when I read it about 8 years ago and I was even more taken with it this time. I pretty firmly believe it's Kafka's best novel and perhaps his best writing period. It isn't as classically Kafkaesque as the The Trial nor is it as viscerally horrific as The Metamorphosis, but to me it resonates in a far more profound and general way than either of these texts. There's something about the way Kafka writes which epitomises the acute crisis of modernity and modern civilisation. He gives voice to feelings and experiences that words no longer adequately explain or that we rely on increasingly empty turns of phrase like dislocation and alienation to surmise.

The best novels tend to act as an interpretative mirror to the reader and the The Castle is no exception. Of course, it's a book about the "ludicrous bungling" of an unresponsive bureaucracy with opaque motives and power structures. K.'s struggle to come to grips with rules and norms he doesn't understand and no one will explain is immediately relatable and comprehensible. Everyone, at some point experiences the infuriating torpor and un-humanness of large organisations and the way rules and regulations, supposedly derived from reason and meant to simplify life, work, and everything in between have the antithetical effect and simply quash any form of dissent or independent action. The castle, obscured behind swirling mist, is quietly menacing because it alludes to the imperious, unaccountable, self-perpetuating nature of political power:

Instead, they let K. go anywhere he liked... and thus pampered and enervated him, ruled out all possibility of conflict, and transposed him to an unofficial, totally unrecognised, troubled, and alien existence. In this life it might easily happen, if he were not always on his guard, that one day or other, in spite of the amiability of the authorities and the scrupulous fulfillment of all his exaggeratedly light duties, he might - deceived by the apparent favour shown of him - conduct himself so imprudently that he might get a fall; and the authorities, ever so mild and friendly, and as if against their will, but in the name of some public regulation unknown to him, might have to come and clear him out of the way.

K. himself though is a fascinating figure and something of an enigma. Who and what is he because he seems to be anything but a Land Surveyor? Since the book's publication, critics have speculated on this question; is he a prophet, a seeker, a revolutionary, a spy? Ultimately, I think a lot of the more conceptual readings of K. miss the man for what he is: a self-possessed, determined individual thrust into a foreign environment who is desperately seeking to orient himself and establish his identity in a hostile - often tacitly so - social milieu. What strikes me the most about the The Castle is the extent to which it is about the ordinary and mundane, but essential aspects of human experience: loneliness, pain, the struggles of work and employment, sex, the need for recognition, companionship, and understanding. K. may well be the victim of an unfair process, but I think fundamentally he is just man in search of actualisation in the form of recognition and respect.

He is constantly told by those around him that he doesn't or can't see the world for what it is - Amalia being, perhaps, the sole genuine exception. But it is striking the extent to which it is the others, and not K., who seem "to misinterpret everything, even the silences". Kafka writes beautifully that "if a man has his eyes bound you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything" and I got the sense that K. - and Amalia to her credit - were the only people really capable of appreciating the grim reality of the situation in which they found themselves. That they lived in an environment in which "the ordinary senseless fear of the people, malicious pleasure in hurting a neighbour, specious friendship, things that can be found everywhere" were, in actual fact, just as problematic and soul-destroying as the malign influence of the castle authorities.

The Castle is a work which is exceedingly sad, but in a subtle, creeping way. It's not immediately disturbing like some of Kafka's works, but creates a sense of glum resignation. I think it's impossible to read this book and not identify with K. It forces you to reflect on what is absent in your own life. What is lacking. What needles you in the day-to-day drudgery of existence. It forces you to confront K.'s basic human needs and by extension your own. Very few books are even close to capable of doing this, but therein lies the magic of Kafka.