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A Letter From The Author
This is a letter that addresses my upcoming novel release, slated for 2027 as of now.
Franz Kafka was a titan of twentieth-century literature whose artistic style and aim resonated deeply with a young boy not old enough to vote, barely tall enough to ride the rollercoaster. His works emblazoned pictures and attitudes — in their horror, stark truth, even beauty — I maintain as remarkable and influential to this day. But amidst the visceral plight of his portrayed protagonists facing monoliths of oppressive bureaucracy — the type of bureaucracy disinterested in anything but their own procedures for their own sake — he painted with crimson words the brutality of unlikely and esoteric strictures on the individual, crushed by systems indifferent to the downtrodden spirit of man, this machinatingly cold veil over the eyes of victims caught in crimes unbeknownst to them, unwittingly stuck in webs woven by unseen architects. And these architects are never revealed. Most pressingly, Kafka wrote about the individual forcefully removed from their tribe, obscured from their roots, as friends, communities, colleagues, and loved ones alike turned against the protagonist. Most impressive on my mind, though, was not the effect of crime and punishment in his stories, not the particulars of justice and transgression, no. Kafka granted the modern reader the most horrifying of pictures beyond the veil of mere bureaucracy or alienation of the self. No, Kafka penned works that sit with us today (and will forever) as grand fixtures of the highest (possibly lowest, more like) tragic state a…
