Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale, Anchor Books, 1998.

Using Kafkaesque devices, Atwood satirizes society's obsession with reproductive rights. In a strange future, women are valued only if their ovaries function.

Terry Gilliam, Brazil, Universal Studios, 1985.

Named as the best film of the year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, Brazil is the story of a bureaucratic cog named Sam Lowry and is often compared to Kafka's The Trial. Lowry's life is destroyed when an insect bug causes a typo on a print- out. Due to this accident, he is labeled a miscreant by the bureaucracy he works for.

Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare of Reason: A Life of Franz Kafka, Noonday Press, 1992.

This book is held to be the best biography of Franz Kafka.

Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead, Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1979.

Ayn Rand presents a different view of the individual than Kafka in this story from 1949. Her...