LITERATURE AND MUSIC. Delia Mayer reads Kafka.

The Disappearance. Introduction by Reiner Stach. Tonhalle Orchestra Zurich.

Who is this Karl Rossmann, perhaps the least known of all Kafka's heroes, and arguably the most awkward? It's time to rediscover him, and fittingly, on the 100th anniversary of Franz Kafka's death – he himself never went to America, and the unfinished novel has little to do with the country, though it certainly does with the joy of storytelling. The extent to which Kafka was influenced by silent film is evident in the witty and rapid-fire dialogues, as our naive good-for-nothing Karl Rossmann stumbles from one absurd situation to the next. Whether the composer Pavel Haas and Kafka knew each other is uncertain – but they certainly shared a sense of the world's relentless acceleration. Also featured: Jiří Pauer's wind quintet.