Franz Kafka is among the most significant 20th century voices to examine the absurdity and terror posed for the individual by what his contemporary Max Weber termed ampquotthe iron cageampquot of society. In this book Mark E. Blum examines Kafkaamp39s three novels Amerika The Trial and The Castle in their exploration of how community is formed or eroded in the interpersonal relations of its protagonists. Critical literature has recognized Kafkaamp39s ability to narrate the gestural moment of alienation or communion. This ampquotsocial discourseampquot was augmented however by a dimension virtually no commentator has recognizedampmdashKafkaamp39s conversation with past and present authors. Kafka encoded authors and their texts representing every century of the evolution of modernism and its societal problems from Bunyan and Defoe through Pope and Lessing to Fontane and Thomas Mann. The intertextual conversation Kafka conducted can enable us to appreciate the profound human problem of realizing community within society.