My favorite author is the peerless Franz Kafka. His novels and writings are unfairly dubbed by some as unnecessarily gory or grotesque. But, his phantasmagoric tales were subtle allegories to the lives that we lead. They are not meant to be taken at face value, instead they have to be deciphered for their underlying meanings. ‘Kafkaesque’ derived from his name has become an entry in all the notable dictionaries of English language. According to Merriam-Webster, it describes events “… having a nightmarishly complex, bizarre, or illogical quality.” The charm added to his persona comes from the fact that he had a modest lifestyle. He worked as a clerk in a bank in Prague. He was not a man about town like a Balzac or an Oscar Wilde. He had a gawky personality abetted by indifferent health problems.
But, his writings were ‘out of the ordinary’ to use a cliché. They revolved round an individual’s grappling with his/her existential problems in this world. His psychological insights were unerringly accurate. World, according to him, was incomprehensible, intimidating or downright indifferent.
But, the real irony was his posthumous fame. As long as he was alive, he did not allow his trusted friend Max Brod – to whom he bequeathed his works - to publish his works. He, instead, pleaded him to relegate them to fire! Thankfully, Max Brod did not heed his request and saved one of the most influential writers as well as thinkers of our times from fading into oblivion, albeit after his death.
