Born in Prague in the twilight years of the Austro-Hungarian Em- pire, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) has become the supreme prose poet of 20th-century anxiety. His enigmatic parables-dark, angst-ridden works such as "The Metamorphosis," The Castle, and The Trial-have been taken up by critics of every stripe. To Freudians, they demonstrate a thwarted Oedipal rage; to Marx-ists, the alienation of capitalist society; to existentialists, the loneli- ness and dread of man in a Godless cosmos; to...