A masterpiece of surreal fantasy. The protagonist, called Athanasius Pernath is flung from the present, to the past, from one nightmare situation where the characters he meets have no link with anyon else. Underlying all the surface panic is a decades-old tragedy, followed by a present-day one. Kafka and Meyrink were contemporaries in the same city, and both possessed the gift of fantasy. It is not correct to say that Meyrink imitates Kafka. If anything, he outdoes Kafka in his bizarre surrealism