A century on from the author’s death, the word ‘kafkaesque’ has survived wrangles over his estate, calls for its banishment and being used on the Simpsons and misused as a meme. How did it gain such a hold over culture?
Schulz might have offered the world more literature, but he was shot dead, aged 50, by a Nazi in 1942 while walking back home in German-occupied Poland.
Whether from a lack of confidence, concerns over sensitive contents, a change of direction, or simply a fit of pique, a number of artists and writers have destroyed their own work.