The story of K, the unwanted Land Surveyor who is never to be admitted to the Castle nor accepted in the village, and yet cannot go home, seems to reveal an inexplicable truth about the nature of existence. In his Introduction, Idris Parry shows that duality - to Kafka a perpetual human condition - lies at the heart of this magnum opus: dualities of certainty and doubt, hope and fear, reason and nonsense, harmony and disintegration. The Castle then, is an unfinished novel that feels strangely complete, in which a labyrinthine world is described in simple language and absurd fantasy reveals profound truth.