Pretty funny 🙂 I read the Castle (or whatever, I think Kafka didn't give any names to his writings) about half a year ago, I think this story managed to maintain the style and the atmosphere pretty similar..
About combining Kafka and chess, this reminds me about how my friend gave a presentation about Kafka's Trial at Finnish classes (or "mother tongue and literature" to be more exact). I don't remember much else about what he said but at the end of his talk he compared The Trial to playing a very complex chess game, finally achieving a dead drawn position, declining a draw offer trying desperately win, and finally losing. By then I had not read the Trial, but this presentation and especially the final "metaphor" (?) encouraged me to read it.. After reading that I went along to read some other Kafka's writings.. I don't know much about literature nor can interpret those very well but somehow I really like the style/whatever of Kafka's novels (haven't yet read much of his short stories, so cannot say about them)
