K. arrives in a village dominated by a castle he can never reach. He has been summoned as a land surveyor, or perhaps he has not; the authorities are evasive, the bureaucracy infinite, the castle visible but perpetually inaccessible. Kafka died before finishing the novel, and Max Brod published it against his wishes. The incompleteness feels essential: K.'s quest cannot end because arrival was never possible. The prose is clear, almost clerical, which makes the nightmare worse. You will recognize this world. You have been living in it.