In it a protagonist known only as "K." arrives in a village and struggles to gain access to the mysterious authorities who govern it from a castle supposedly owned by Graf Westwest.

Dark and at times surreal, The Castle is often understood to be about alienation, unresponsive bureaucracy, the frustration of trying to conduct business with non-transparent, seemingly arbitrary controlling systems, and the futile pursuit of an unobtainable goal.

Kafka began writing the novel on the evening of 27 January 1922, the day he arrived at the mountain resort of Spindlermühle (now in the Czech Republic).

At one point he told his friend Max Brod that the novel would conclude with K., the book's protagonist, continuing to reside in the village until his death; the castle would notify him on his deathbed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was permitted to live and work there.

[1][8] This is one possible interpretation of the work based on numerous Judeo-Christian references as noted by many including Arnold Heidsieck.

[6] In 1961 Malcolm Pasley got access to all of Kafka's works except The Trial, and deposited them in Oxford's Bodleian Library.

Pasley and a team of scholars (Gerhard Neumann, Jost Schillemeit, and Jürgen Born) started publishing the works in 1982 through S. Fischer Verlag.

This team restored the original German text to its full and incomplete state, including Kafka's unique punctuation, considered critical to the style.

At one time Stroemfeld/Roter Stern Verlag did work for the rights to publish a critical edition with manuscript and transcription side-by-side.

[11] The title Das Schloss may be translated as "the castle" or "the palace", but the German word is a polyseme that can also mean "the lock".

Anthea Bell's translation states that it was "an extensive complex of buildings, a few of them with two storeys, but many of them lower and crowded close together.

He is quickly notified that his castle contact is an official named Klamm, who, in an introductory note, informs K. he will report to the Mayor.

One of the more obvious contradictions between the "official word" and the village conception is the dissertation by the secretary Erlanger on Frieda's required return to service as a barmaid.

The latter declaration builds the importance of Hans, Otto's son, in K.'s eyes as a way to gain access to the castle officials.

According to Ritchie Robertson in his notes to Anthea Bell's translation, Klamm "suggests the Czech word klam, 'illusion'" (p. 277).

For example, the official Galater (the German word for Galatians), one of the initial regions to develop a strong Christian following from the work of Apostle Paul and his assistant Barnabas.

Even the Critical Editions naming of the beginning chapter, "Arrival", among other things liken K. to an Old Testament messiah.

Hence it is no surprise that many feel that the work is a direct result of the political situation of the era in which it was written, which was shot through with anti-Semitism, remnants of the Habsburg monarchy, etc.

For instance, the treatment of the Barnabas family, with their requirement to first prove guilt before they could request a pardon from it and the way their fellow villagers desert them have been pointed out as a direct reference to the anti-Semitic climate at the time.

But while Josef K.'s surroundings stay familiar even when strange events befall him, K. finds himself in a new world whose laws and rules are unfamiliar to him.

[1] In 1961 Malcolm Pasley was able to gain control of the manuscript, along with most of the other Kafka writings (save The Trial) and had it placed in the Oxford's Bodleian library.

The chief objective of this new edition, which is intended for the general public, is to present the text in a form that is as close as possible to the state in which the author left the manuscript.

But, Coetzee adds, "in its very striving toward strangeness and denseness [Harman's] own work—welcome though it is today—may, as history moves on and tastes change, be pointing toward obsolescence too".