Kafka, Our Contemporary

Plaque marking the birthplace of Franz Kafka in Prague, designed by Karel Hladík and Jan Kaplický in 1966. Photo: Andrew Shiva / Wikimedia. CC BY-SA 4.0

In communist Prague, Kafka was banned. Something similar happened in the Soviet Union and other totalitarian countries, so their citizens were not able to read Franz Kafka. The political authorities of those countries were aware that the author’s portrayal of totalitarianism was so accurate and lucid that any reader would recognize it as...