Amerika (novel)

1927 novel by Franz Kafka

Amerika, (German working title Der Verschollene, "The Missing") also known as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika), Amerika: The Missing Person and Lost in America, is the incomplete first novel by author Franz Kafka (1883–1924), written between 1911 and 1914 and published posthumously in 1927. The novel originally began as a short story titled "The Stoker". The novel incorporates many details of the experiences of his relatives who had emigrated to the United States. The commonly used title Amerika is from the edition of the text put together by Kafka's close friend, Max Brod, after Kafka's death in 1924. It has been published in at least three major English language versions: as Amerika, translated by Edwin and Willa Muir (1938); as The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika), translated by Michael Hoffmann (1996); and as Amerika: The Missing Person, translated by Mark Harman (2008).

The first chapter of this novel is a short story titled "The Stoker". The story describes the bizarre wanderings of sixteen year old European immigrant Karl Roßmann (Rossmann), who was forced to go to New York City to escape the scandal of being sexually assaulted by a housemaid. As the ship arrives in the United States, he becomes friends with a stoker who is about to be dismissed from his job. Karl identifies with the stoker and decides to help him; together they go to see the captain of the ship. In a surreal turn of events, Karl's uncle, Senator Jacob, is in a meeting with the captain. Karl does not know that Senator Jacob is his uncle, but Mr. Jacob recognizes him and takes him away from the stoker. Karl stays with his uncle for some time but is later abandoned by him after making a visit to his uncle's friend without his uncle's full approval. Wandering aimlessly, he becomes friends with two drifters named Robinson and Delamarche. They promise to find him a job, but they sell his suit without permission, eat his food in front of him without offering him any, and ransack his belongings. Finally, Karl departs from them on bad terms after he's offered a job by a manager at Hotel Occidental. He works there as a lift boy. One day Robinson shows up drunk at his work asking him for money. Afraid of losing his job if seen talking with a friend, which is forbidden for lift boys, Karl agrees to lend him money, then commits the far worse offence of bunking a drunk sick Robinson in the lift boy dorm. Being dismissed for leaving his post, Karl agrees not only to pay for Robinson's taxi, but also joins him. They travel to Delamarche's place. Delamarche is now staying with a wealthy and obese lady named Brunelda. She wants to take in Karl as her servant. Karl refuses, but Delamarche physically forces him to stay and he is imprisoned in her apartment. He tries to break out, but is beaten by Delamarche and Robinson. On the balcony, he chats with a student who tells him he should stay, because it is hard to find a job elsewhere. He decides to stay. One day he sees an advertisement for the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma, which is looking for employees. The theatre promises to find employment for everyone. Karl applies for a job and gets engaged as a "technical worker." He is then sent to Oklahoma by train and is welcomed by the vastness of the valleys and adopts the name "Negro" as his own.

In conversations Kafka used to refer to this book as his "American novel", later he called it simply The Stoker, after the title of the first chapter, which appeared separately in 1913. Kafka's working title was The Man Who Disappeared (Der Verschollene). The title Amerika was chosen by Kafka's literary executor, Max Brod, who assembled the uncompleted manuscript and published it after his death.

Kafka broke off his work on this novel with unexpected suddenness, and it remained unfinished. From what he told his friend and biographer Max Brod, the incomplete chapter "The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma" (a chapter the beginning of which particularly delighted Kafka, so that he used to read it aloud with great effect) was intended to be the concluding chapter of the work and was supposed to end on a note of reconciliation. In enigmatic language, Kafka used to hint smilingly that within this "almost limitless" theatre his young hero was going to find again a profession, a stand by, his freedom, even his old home and his parents, as if by some celestial witchery. The parts of the narrative immediately preceding this chapter are also incomplete. Two large fragments, describing Karl's service with Brunelda, are extant, but do not fill up the gaps. Only the first six chapters were divided and given titles by Kafka.

Kafka was fond of reading travel books and memoirs. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin was one of his favorite books, from which he liked reading passages aloud. Although he always had a longing for free space and distant lands, it is said that he never travelled farther than France and Upper Italy. Despite this, a rare photo shows Kafka with an unidentified man at Marielyst beach in Denmark. Kafka, at the time, was also reading, or rereading, several novels by Charles Dickens and wrote in his diary: "My intention was, as I now see, to write a Dickens novel, enriched by the sharper lights which I took from our modern times, and by the pallid ones I would have found in my own interior."

Federico Fellini's film Intervista revolves around a fictional filming of this novel's adaptation. The New York performance group Nature Theater of Oklahoma named themselves after the one in Kafka's novel. Danish director Lars von Trier's 1991 art film Europa was heavily influenced by the novel, so much so that its title is meant to "mirror" the one of the novel. German artist Martin Kippenberger attempted to complete the story in his installation The Happy Ending of Franz Kafka's "Amerika". In 2016, American rock band Young the Giant released the single "Amerika" as part of an inspiration from Kafka's Amerika.