A darkly comic novel from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, The Castle follows a man grappling with his inscrutable new master's authority, now freshly repackaged for the Union Square & Co. Signature Classics Line. Published posthumously in 1926, The Castle is Franz Kafka's final, unfinished novel, and a dark, surrealistic exploration of bureaucracy and alienation. Known or its absurdity and labrinthine plot, the novel follows a land surveyor known as "K" who, after moving for work, is drawn to a mysterious yet inaccessible castle that governs his new village. Irving Howe praised the book as projecting "a greater strength of will than we have encountered in Kafka's earlier writings -- an effort to overcome the muteness of existence.".