The writings of Franz Kafka (pictured above at the age of 27) are so distinctive and so unique that the very word Kafka conjures up images of the nondescript everyman overwhelmed and buried by an impersonal, monolithic society. While his stories all describe this hopelessly confused everyman with no prospect of escaping his fate, this is done without any commentary about society or sympathy for the man crushed by that society. There is only detached, indifferent storytelling which reads like non-fiction.