Rebecca Meadows, age 16, of Danville, Ill., for her question:

WHAT DOES THE TERM 'KAFKAESQUE' MEAN?

The term "Kafkaesque" has come to be applied commonly to grotesque, anxiety producing social conditions or their treatment in literature. The term is taken from a Czech Jewish novelist and short story writer named Franz Kafka.

Kafka wrote disturbing, symbolic fiction, written in German, and prefigured the oppression and despair of his times.

Born in Prague in 1883 into a middle class family, he studied law but took a civil service post and wrote in his spare time. He had a domineering father who seemed to stifle his son's work. Kafka often expressed his feelings of inferiority and paternal rejection.

The themes of Kafka's work are the loneliness, frustration and oppressive guilt of an individual threatened by anonymous forces behind his comprehension or control.

Scholars say that Kafka's lucid style, blending reality with fantasy and tinged with ironic humor, contributes to the nightmarish, claustrophobic effect of his work, as in his famous long short story "The Metamorphosis" (1915).  The writer died in 1924.