To mark the centenary of Franz Kafka's death (b. 03.07.1883 – d. 03.06.1924), Electra is publishing three articles on the Czech writer: one by Gianluca Cuozzo, professor of Philosophy at the University of Turin, on representations of bureaucracy and the exercise of power, or, to put it another way, everything that gave rise to the adjective ‘kafkaesque’, which has now come into common usage; another article by António Guerreiro centred on biographical issues, drawing on the monumental three-volume biography of Kafka by the German author Reiner Stach; and finally, an article by Jacques Le Rider, a French Germanist and renowned scholar of Central European literature and culture, who writes about Kafka's bilingualism, his relationship with the German and Czech languages, and the historical and linguistic background of Prague.