"Franz Kafka: The Ghosts in the Machine" adds an original critical framework to the work begun by Stanley Corngold and Benno Wagner in their monumental collection "Franz Kafka: The Office Writings" (2008). It is widely acknowledged that Kafka s daytime occupation as a specialist in industrial accident insurance contributed in a significant way to his fiction.
Corngold and Wagner frame Kafka s writings as cultural events, each work reflecting the economic and cultural discourses of his epoch. In pursuing Kafka s avowed interest in the theory and practice of insurance, the authors view the...