K: A Novel offers a gripping, nuanced exploration of how imprisonment tests a writer–mentally, physically, and morally. Just as compelling is how the novel conveys the writer’s need for self-expression, which never diminishes, even under the most trying circumstances.
For the most part, the central character, Francis Kauffman, keeps his identity as a writer to himself–initially, because it is subsumed by his work responsibilities, first as a policy analyst for a Chinese insurance conglomerate, and later as a teacher at a Beijing university, a job he takes to make more time for his writing, with limited success. But after being accused of inciting political insurrection among his students, among other charges, Kauffman is sent to a notorious Chinese prison. There, being identified as a writer would put him in grave danger, or worse, because any form of artistic expression is strictly forbidden.
Yet in his prison cell, Kauffman keeps writing, in his head: “No pen. No brush. No ink stone. Only memory.” Even there, though, he’s under suspicion. Whenever a preternaturally attuned guard senses that Kauffman is composing something in his mind, he pokes him with a bamboo stick.
O’Connell deftly weaves together Kauffman’s present in the prison, and his past–both as a teacher who inspired his students (ultimately, to a dangerous degree) and as the son of a difficult father, Otto, who never appreciated Kauffman’s talents as a writer, and actually seemed to disdain them. As an additional strain in the father-son relationship, Kauffman had taken the job at the Chinese insurance conglomerate only to get Otto out of a financial bind. After Otto ran his own insurance company into bankruptcy, the conglomerate purchased one of its subsidiaries and then asked Kauffman, who’d once studied in China, to work for the firm. Kauffman realized that this was the classic “offer you can’t refuse,” and that his acceptance of the position was a mandatory part of Otto’s “rescue” by the conglomerate.
Kauffman’s employment at the insurance company and his troubled relationship with his father are just two aspects of his life that echo the history of Franz Kafka. Also like Kafka, Kauffman devotes years to his writing, though he sees little of it published, and a friend’s intervention is the only thing that rescues an assortment of it from destruction. Further, although Kauffman desires relationships with women, he seems unable to form lasting commitments, similar to Kafka. The associations with Kafka give Kauffman’s story a timeless sort of resonance. So does O’Connell’s writing about the Kafkaesque realities that Kauffman faces throughout the novel–for example, his sense of alienation at work and, later, in prison, and the fact that he’s often forced to deal with absurd situations and faceless power structures. When conveying Kauffman’s struggles with these realities, O’Connell does so with insight, feeling, and at times with a dark sense of humor.
In the realm of the Kafkaesque, Kauffman and his cellmates learn that they will be responsible for carrying out the execution of one of their number, Xu Xuo, who as Kauffman observes, “is sentenced to death for a crime so terrible as to be unknown in our circle.” Yet not “a single restriction or explicit direction has been handed down. … There is only the sense that if things don’t end badly for Xu Xuo within a reasonable time period, they will end badly for us.”
In some of the most captivating scenes in the novel, Kauffman and his cellmates engage in moral philosophy concerning their crimes (known or unknown, freely admitted or otherwise). One of the best of these scenes, to my mind, is one in which Kauffman and his most thoughtful fellow prisoner, Brother Gao, debate the ethics of killing Xu Xuo, and the relative value of his life. “Maybe the world doesn’t need him,” Kauffman says. “Maybe it’s all right to kill him. It could be considered an act of mercy.” Gao counters that killing even one person on the basis of mercy could lead to dangerous interpretations and rationalizations.
But as the argument progresses, Gao shares the story of why he was imprisoned: a tragedy that left him with feelings that, in certain ways, contradict the opinions he’d shared with Kauffman. Kauffman, too, sees flaws in his own thoughts and feelings about Xu Xuo. He thinks, “I can’t possibly know what Xu Xuo did, I’ll never know, and I cannot justify his murder. … I … ask myself how we can justify any belief. The feeling that Xu Xuo is a dirty human is so much stronger than any knowledge; it trumps everything.” During a later encounter between Kauffman and Xu Xuo, these observations take on a stark new significance. And as Kauffman’s and Gao’s stories show so vividly, even the strongest desire to act according to ideals about just behavior can break down under the pressures of lived experience.
Eventually, Kauffman and his cellmates are forced to perform labor outside of the prison, and some of them (Kauffman, Gao, Xu Xuo, and another inmate) are sent to a massive garbage dump, where they are charged with harvesting potentially reusable material. Although Kauffman grows more frail under these work conditions, he is able to write more than he’d been able to in prison, using scraps of paper he’s collected from the dump. He composes literary works, as well as letters to his father and other people from his former life, thinking:
One deeply moving scene shows one way that stories can survive: by being shared with others. When Kauffman becomes sick enough to be sent to a warehouse-like hospital, he is cared for by a doctor who himself is a prisoner. After the doctor, exhausted by his seemingly endless duties, slumps down in a chair for a moment of respite, Kauffman decides to tell him “my story.” In fact, it is the story of his paternal grandfather, Amschel Kauffman, who was an inmate himself: at Sachsenhausen concentration camp during the Second World War. In its own way, Amschel’s story is as Kafkaesque as Kauffman’s: a stained-glass artisan, he was pulled from laundry work to design windows for the Kommandant’s new villa–until a turn of events led him to an end he hadn’t expected.
When the doctor asks Kauffman why he told him this story, Kauffman explains it as an expression of love for his father. “He’d be happy with this story, I think, and would’ve liked that I told the story of his father, a man he never met.”
The doctor is moved by Kauffman’s account, and so was I. As this scene and other parts of this affecting novel show, stories–and storytelling–will always have the power to connect us, even under the most difficult circumstances.
Would My Pick be Your Pick?
If you're interested in ________, the answer may be "Yes":⧫ Stories of persistence under trying circumstances
⧫ Stories about family conflicts
⧫ Explorations of the power of storytelling
