(published in English as
Amerika: The Man Who Disappeared) is a novel fragment published posthumously in 1927 by the author's friend and publisher, Max Brod, under the title
Amerika. The first chapter of the novel was printed separately in 1913 as a short story by the Kurt Wolff Verlag under the title
Der Heizer: Ein Fragment. Kafka expressed characteristic dissatisfaction about the novel to Felice Bauer in a letter dated 10 March 1913, asserting that he had written “550 useless pages” (Kafka 1999: 129). Only the first chapter (“Der Heizer”), he maintained, had “inner truth” (Kafka 1999: 128). Kafka saw a deep affinity between the short stories
Der Heizer,
Das Urteil, and
Die Verwandlung. He told his publisher Wolff that they should be anthologized in a book…
1951 words
Citation: Reid, Christopher. "Der Verschollene / Amerika". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 17 April 2009 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=24879, accessed 19 May 2024.]
