Kafka's Narrators: A Study of His Stories and Sketches

When Roy Pascal died in 1980 he had all but completed a book on narrative viewpoint in Kafka's shorter fiction: the stories and sketches, as well as the numerous fables and parables. It was for Pascal a genuine voyage of discovery from which he believed he was bringing back significant observations that would contribute to a richer and more accurate assessment of Kafka's art. Prepared for publication by professors Martin Swales and Siegbert Prawer, the book was originally published in 1982 in the confident expectation that it had achieved the author's aim. Although it contains detailed analyses of individual works, the book is more than simply one further addition to the bewildering corpus of secondary literature on Kafka. For it is a study which manages to cut through many previous critical controversies by paying scrupulous attention to matters of literary and stylistic technique.