You know a writer has made their mark when their name ends up becom­ing used as an adjec­tive: Dick­en­sian and Orwellian spring to mind of course, but we also occa­sion­al­ly see Sha­vian to describe George Bernard Shaw’s didac­tic com­mit­ment to social pur­pose, Well­sian to describe a futur­ism rem­i­nis­cent of H G Wells, or Tolkienesque for any­thing with elves or wiz­ards in it. My favourite is Kafkaesque, which describes a night­mar­ish bureau­crat­ic dystopia, a famil­iar theme to any­one who has tried to sort out a non-stan­dard trans­ac­tion with Pay­Pal.

Franz Kaf­ka (1883–1924) was born into a Ger­man-Jew­ish fam­i­ly in Prague and is wide­ly regard­ed as one of the major fig­ures of 20^th cen­tu­ry lit­er­a­ture. His work typ­i­cal­ly fea­tures char­ac­ters fac­ing sur­re­al­is­tic predica­ments and face­less bureau­crat­ic pow­ers, and thus Kaf­ka explores themes of alien­ation and exis­ten­tial anx­i­ety. Few of his works were pub­lished in his life­time, and all his best-known works such as Die Ver­wand­lung (The Meta­mor­pho­sis), Der Process (The Tri­al), and Das Schloss (The Cas­tle) were pub­lished posthu­mous­ly. In fact, Kaf­ka had instruct­ed in his will that these unpub­lished works be destroyed but, for­tu­nate­ly for pos­ter­i­ty, his friend and execu­tor Max Brod ignored his wish­es.

I read The Cas­tle as a young man trav­el­ling the world and spend­ing lots of time in con­sulates procur­ing visas, and I remem­ber being hooked. For­tu­nate­ly, although I spent many an hour in con­sular wait­ing areas, my own expe­ri­ence of bureau­cra­cy nev­er matched that of “K.”, the unfor­tu­nate pro­tag­o­nist who arrives in a vil­lage and strug­gles to make head­way with the shady author­i­ties who gov­ern from the cas­tle on the hill.

K. spends much of the nov­el try­ing to secure a meet­ing with Klamm, the elu­sive offi­cial who might – just might – be able to stamp the nec­es­sary forms and obtain for K. his hoped-for res­i­den­cy in the vil­lage. Sad­ly, K. is frus­trat­ed at every turn, not least by Klamm’s gate­keep­ing sec­re­tary, Momus.

The nov­el was unfin­ished at the time of Kafka’s death from tuber­cu­lo­sis in 1924, though Kaf­ka appar­ent­ly told Max Brod that K. would con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the cas­tle author­i­ties until his death: they would noti­fy him on his deathbed that his “legal claim to live in the vil­lage was not valid, yet, tak­ing cer­tain aux­il­iary cir­cum­stances into account, he was per­mit­ted to live and work there”. A suit­ably iron­ic con­clu­sion.