Kafka's Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing

In 1916, Kafka wrote of The Sugar Baron, a dime-store colonial adventure story, "[it] affects me so deeply that I feel it is about myself, or as if it were the book of rules for my life." John Zilcosky reveals that this perhaps surprising statement -- made by the Prague-bound poet of modern isolation--is part of a network of remarks that exemplify Kafka's ongoing preoccupation with popular travel writing, exoticism, and colonial fantasy. Taking this biographical peculiarity as a starting point, Kafka's Travels elegantly re-reads Kafka's major works (Amerika, The Trial, In the Penal Colony, The Castle) through the lens of fin-de-siècle travel culture. The book offers a lucid, readable introduction into Kafka's life and work, and sophisticated analysis of Kafka's major writings in relation to contemporary literary theory.