Reading Groups

Franz Kafka’s The Castle with Martha Cooley

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4 Sessions Sundays, 11:00 am EDT - 12:30 pm EDT July 12 to August 23, 2026

Online via Zoom

The ‘With Books’ option includes the title required for this group at a 10% discount from our Bookstore.

Meeting Dates:
7/12, 7/26, 8/9, 8/23
Online via Zoom

Published a century ago, Franz Kafka’s The Castle has a lot to say to readers now—about bureaucracy as theater, but also about the deceptions of desire: when and how can we know what we really want? In this comic, unsettling, and superbly strange novel, a land surveyor’s attempt to do his job widens into an impossible quest for clarity and truth. Even as the narrative pulls the reader in multiple directions, it consistently maintains the peculiar magic of its language (beautifully rendered in English by Mark Harman) along with the force of its insights into conundrums of feeling and action that are both utterly weird and entirely familiar.

Reading List: The Castle by Franz Kafka, translated from the German by Mark Harman

Session I: Publisher’s Note and Translator’s Preface, and Chs. I-VI
Session II: Chs. VII-XIII
Session III: Chs. XIV-XIX
Session IV: Chs. XX-end, and the Afterword

What to expect from this reading group: A conversational, participant-driven experience, with contextual information and possible interpretative approaches provided.

What to read in advance of the first meeting: Please read the publisher’s note, translator’s preface, and chapters 1-6 before our first meeting.

We offer a limited number of need-based scholarships for our Reading Groups and Writing Workshops, covering 50% of tuition. Applicants selected for scholarships will be notified one week prior to the first meeting. To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form.

Pricing inclusive of sales tax if applicable. Please note: All virtual classes are recorded. Please click here for information about our recording policy.

Led by

Martha Cooley

Martha Cooley

Martha Cooley is the author most recently of an essay collection, My Little Donkey, as well as of three novels—The Archivist (a national bestseller published in a dozen foreign markets), Thirty-three Swoons, and Buy Me Love—and a memoir, Guesswork. She co-translated Antonio Romani’s The Patient Wait of the Stones (2026) and Antonio Tabucchi’s Time Ages in a Hurry (2015). Martha taught in the Bennington Writing Seminars and is a Professor Emerita at Adelphi University. She lives in Castiglione del Terziere, Italy.

About this series

Reading Groups

Whether you’re looking to catch up on great novels or you’re interested in exploring a new writer or literary period, our reading groups offer high-level literary discussion led by experts in the field.

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