Kafka's final, unfinished novel, The Castle, remains one of the most celebrated yet most impenetrable masterpieces of modernist fiction, and a focus of literary criticsm and theory. In this chronological survey of the critical attention it has attracted, both academic and non-academic, Professor Dowden emphasises the acts of critical imagination which have shaped our image and understanding of Kafka and the novel. He explores the historical and cultural milieus of criticism, from the Weimar Era of Max Brod and Walter Benjamin to Lionel Trilling's Cold War to postmodern multiculturalism and...