Railway Children: How Conrad Almost Met Kafka
Railway Children: How Conrad Almost Met Kafka

Author(s): Anthony Fothergill
Subject(s): Language and Literature Studies, Literary Texts
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: Joseph Conrad; Franz Kafka; Albert Thys; Joseph Loewy; the Congo; railways and colonial exploitation; narrative style; the “Kafkaesque”
Summary/Abstract: Although Franz Kafka never met Joseph Conrad, there are uncanny links betweenthem which the essay explores. Both wrote stories implicitly about the Congo. ForConrad it was from his actual experience, in Heart of Darkness and “Outpost of Progress.”In Kafka’s case his “experience” was virtual, in that he wrote two fragmentaryaccounts, one set in Africa, the other, “Memoirs of the Kalda Railway,” set in Russia,but both purely fictional, based on his Uncle Joseph Loewy’s memories of life in theCongo. But, as a missing link, Conrad and Loewy were both employed by AlbertThys, director of the Brussels Société Anonyme trading company, and sent almost atthe same time, to work in the Congo. The essay identifies uncanny affinities in thefictional accounts by Conrad and Kafka, bringing together thematic and stylisticsimilarities, surrounding the motif of speculative railway-building projects.

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