"To aspire to give an identity to Kafka is the most daring thing that can be done. Because Kafka was not relevant when he was born in 1883, nor when he died in 1924, nor even in 1960, when we, in Greece, have our first encounter with him. Kafka becomes globally relevant just now, fresh, alive, as soon as we exit the twentieth century...
Kafka was - for us Westerners - the incomprehensible, both for the period he lived in and for decades later, until 1985, when he is now read as a global chronicler of the end of our century."