B A U M A N R A R E B O O K S A U G U S T 2 0 2 3 "THE GREAT THEATRE OF OKLAHOMA CALLS YOU!": KAFKA'S AMERICA, 1938 FIRST EDITION IN ENGLISH 18. KAFKA, Franz. America. London: George Routledge, 1938. Octavo, original red cloth, original dust jacket. $4000 First edition in English, first state, of Kafka's unfinished posthumous novel, "perhaps the most purely delightful of Kafka's books"—a lovely copy in the original dust jacket. Translated from the German by Edwin and Willa Muir, with an Introductory Note by Edwin and an Afterword by Max Brod discussing the state of the manuscript at the time of Kafka's death. "America stands somewhat apart from Kafka's two other long stories, The Castle and The Trial. On the surface, at least, it has little trace of allegory… Yet America reads very like the other two books; the quality of the imagination is the same, and it takes us into a strange world which becomes stranger the more realistically, the more circumstantially, it is described… There is a less intense pressure behind the scenes in America than in the other books, and that is one of the things which make it perhaps the most purely delightful of Kafka's books" (vii-xi). Binding first state, with gilt rather than black titling to the spine. First published posthumously in Germany in 1927. Publisher's postcard laid in. Small bookseller label to rear pastedown. Minor spotting to upper edge, book about-fine; dust jacket with a few small nicks to the corners of the slightly toned spine, near-fine. A lovely copy. 18
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