Franz Kafka: Subversive Dreamer

Franz Kafka, reveur insoumis (Paris: Stock Editions, 2004) is an attempt to identify and properly contextualize the social critique in Kafka's biography and work that links father-son antagonisms, heterodox Jewish religious thinking, and anti-authoritarian/anarchist protest against the rising power of bureaucratic modernity. The book proceeds chronologically, starting with biographical facts often neglected or denied relating to Kafka's relations with the Anarchist circles in Prague, followed by an analysis of the three great unfinished novels-Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle-as well as some of the most important short stories. Fragments, parables, correspondence, and the diaries are also used in order to better understand the major literary works. Overall Loewy's book is an attempt to grapple with the critical and subversive dimension of Kafka's writings, which is often hidden or masked by the fabulistic character of the work. Loewy's reading has already generated controversy, because of its distance from the usual canon of literary criticism about the Prague writer, but the book has been well received in its original French edition and has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, and Turkish. The chapter on The Castle was published in English by the UNESCO journal Diogenes (no. 204, December 2003).