Kafkaesque
adjective
ˌkaf-
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Kafkaesque Literature
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech-born German-language writer whose surreal fiction vividly expressed the anxiety, alienation, and powerlessness of the individual in the 20th century. The opening sentence of his 1915 story The Metamorphosis has become one of the most famous in Western literature (“As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect”), while in his novel The Trial, published a year after his death, a young man finds himself caught up in the mindless bureaucracy of the law after being charged with a crime that is never named. So deft was Kafka’s prose at detailing nightmarish settings in which characters are crushed by nonsensical, blind authority, that writers began using his name as an adjective a mere 16 years after his death. Although many other literary eponyms, from Austenian to Homeric, exist and are common enough, Kafkaesque gets employed more than most and in a wide variety of contexts, leading to occasional charges that the word has been watered down and given a lack of specificity due to overuse.
Examples of Kafkaesque in a Sentence
Naveen Rao, Forbes, 22 Oct. 2024
His mirthless laugh might have suggested Kafkaesque persecution, or Hardyesque inexorability of fate.
—Tad Friend, The New Yorker, 21 Oct. 2024
Much like his success building houses in Muara Angke, Prabowo wants to sidestep Indonesia’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy with direct action.
—Charlie Campbell / Jakarta, TIME, 14 Oct. 2024
The film centers on Leopold Trepper, a World War II spy mastermind, who faced a Kafkaesque struggle in 1970s Poland.
—Leo Barraclough, Variety, 18 Aug. 2024
Upon his Kafkaesque arrest and inexplicable 15-year imprisonment, Choi’s Oh Dae-su is an amnesiac hero in the vein of Jason Bourne, carrying the film by serving as a stand-in for any vengeful impulses that his audiences might harbor.
—Indiewire Staff, IndieWire, 13 Aug. 2024
More to Read Judge vacates conviction of man whose identity was stolen in ‘Kafkaesque’ case
April 11, 2024
A thief stole his identity, but nobody believed him.
—Brittny Mejia, Los Angeles Times, 17 June 2024
Many episodes circle around a scandal in Guantánamo’s history to draw out the brutally Kafkaesque nature of life on the inside.
—Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 2 May 2024
Obsessed with procedure, reports, and committees, the bloc has always been a bogeyman for governments both inside and outside it, a symbol of constitutional overreach and Kafkaesque bureaucracy meant to frustrate earnest national politicians trying to help their citizens.
—Saim Saeed, Foreign Affairs, 23 May 2019
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Cite this Entry
“Kafkaesque.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Kafkaesque. Accessed 30 Nov. 2024.
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