This year marks the centenary of Franz Kafka's death, and the appearance of his name in a mainstream sitcom is a reminder that he is part of that tiny group of writers whose overall style and manner is so identifiable that it has become an adjective. Just as a sooty-cheeked urchin or an exaggeratedly hearty paterfamilias is destined to be described as Dickensian, any situation characterised by over-elaborate and baffling bureaucracy that might induce manic despair when faced with its inhumane workings will summon up Kafka's adjectival spectre, to the smug nodding of the initiated and the bafflement of the Michael Scotts of the world.
In very different ways, these three books simultaneously illuminate and complicate what we mean or think we mean if we are tempted to describe some phenomenon as Kafkaesque. They showcase the variousness and complexity that characterised the author and his writings, and that tend to get sidetracked or ignored when he is reduced to an all-purpose prophet of modern bureaucratised malaise. Karolina Watroba's Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka is not or not only a biography; it economically combines a great deal of information about Kafka's life and writings with a rich account of what modern readers have made of him.
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