Orwell vs. Kafka: The Man Who Disappeared - Episode 1

Drama of the Week

Franz Kafka’s dark comic fantasy about an innocent’s misadventures in early 20th century America.

After a mysterious family scandal, the young immigrant Karl Rossman is expelled from his Bohemian home and dispatched to America by his parents. Adrift in this strange new world, Karl is soon swept up in an America that is by turns a land of endless promise and monstrous brutality.

The Man Who Disappeared (also known as Amerika) was Franz Kafka’s first attempt at a novel but remained unfinished at the time of his death and only published posthumously. Kafka had never visited America and the fantastical world of his novel is clearly inspired by the myths and fears wrapped up in the country’s great economic boom of the early 20th century, particularly the rapid rise of big business and industrialisation.

A new adaptation by Ed Harris.

Karl . . . . . Divian Ladwa Narrator . . . . . Fenella Woolgar Jacob . . . . . Karl Johnson Mr Green . . . . . Ed Gaughan Delamarche . . . . . Charlie Anson Robinson . . . . . Ian Dunnett Jnr Head Cook . . . . . Jessica Turner Klara . . . . . Anna Spearpoint

Production co-ordinator: Ben Hollands Sound design: Peter Ringrose Director: Sasha Yevtushenko

A BBC Studios Audio production

Ed Harris is an award-winning dramatist and comedy writer. He has had over 20 audio plays broadcast on BBC Radio 3 and 4, as well as three series of his popular wartime sitcom, Dot. His work has won numerous awards including two Writers’ Guild Awards, a BBC Audio Drama Award and a Sony Gold/Radio Academy Award. His stage plays include Strangers Like Me (National Theatre Connections), Mongrel Island (Soho Theatre), Never Ever After (shortlisted for the Meyer-Whitworth Award) and What The Thunder Said (Theatre Centre). He is a current Royal Literary Fellow at Brighton University and Writer-in-Residence for the Oxford Kafka 2024 programme at Oxford University.