In its beginning stages, however, Amerika received the rapt attention of its author. Only the first chapter was published during Kafka’s lifetime, and though The Stoker was recognized as a quality work, the rest of Amerika had to wait for Max Brod to come along.
Kafka wrote the majority of the novel from 1911-1912, with additional fragments being added intermittently over the next few years until it was finally pushed aside for other things. He chose the title because Kafka often called the work his “American novel,” but Kafka had a number of different names for it, such as Der Verschollene (translated alternately as The Man Who Disappeared, The Missing One, Lost Without a Trace, or The Lost One) and The Stoker, the title given to the first chapter and sometimes extended to include the entire work. The original manuscript bears no title – Amerika is the name given to it by Kafka’s friend and posthumous editor, Max Brod. Although like his other attempts it remains unfinished, enough of it exists for us to recognize it as a novel, and so it is here we begin. Therefore, when talking about Kafka’s novels, we always have to start with Amerika. The fragment “Wedding Preparations in the Country” was supposed to be much longer than it was, but he gave up on it. He tried to collaborate with Max Brod on a work called Richard and Samuel, but that didn’t work out either. He abandoned it, and the manuscripts have since disappeared. In 1903, he started The Child and the City. Kafka took some early stabs at writing a novel, but none of them really worked out.
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