The significance of Kafka’s works was realized largely after his death in 1924. Many of Kafka’s works were published posthumously under the supervision of his close friend Max Brod.[1] Though Kafka writings are set in an “anonymous city”, literary fiction is “most potent when it reveals fictions that govern the lives of men” .[2] [3]  Kafka’s commentary on alienation and bureaucracy within the context of Prague was aptly received by Czech literature circles, and therefore largely repressed in the attempted erasure of the legacy and collective memory of the oppression of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. [4] Although Kafka did not identify with the German speaking hegemon and in fact published clandestine criticisms of the political order, his works were nevertheless associated by language and content with this dark time. 

The communist coup of 1948 further led to the preclusion of Kafka’s works as any literature, speech, or action that was deemed treasonous to the new regime warranted arrest.[5] The period from 1948 to 1968 was a time of tumultuous political leadership and heavy censorship. Kafka’s works were momentarily revived during the Prague Spring, a brief period of liberalization and free expression. However this movement of “socialism with a human face” was quickly squashed by Soviet interests, and a period of renewed censorship and stricter communist rule was instituted.[6] Despite Kafka’s socialist alignment, ironically, his works would be banned until after the Velvet Revolution and the fall of communist rule in Czechoslovakia.[4] 

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