Kafkaesque: the very word evokes tortuous bureaucracy, crushing self-doubt, and an almost unbearable inadequacy in the face of higher powers. After Kafka, it can be said, literature was not the same.
Franz Kafka is the voice of the outsider at once defined by its affiliations and completely, utterly alone. He was a Jew among Christians, a nonobservant Jew among believers. Louis Begley, himself a
