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Kafka
Czech writer who wrote in German. Born into a middle-class Jewish family in Prague (then part of Austria-Hungary), he earned a doctorate and then worked successfully but unhappily at a government insurance office from 1907 until he was forced to retire in 1922 by tuberculosis, which would cause his death at age 40. Hypersensitive and neurotic, he reluctantly published only a few works in his lifetime, incl. the symbolic story The Metamorphosis (1915), the allegorical fantasy In the Penal Colony (1919), and the story collection A Country Doctor (1919). His unfinished novels The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926), and Amerika (1927), published posthumously against Kafka's wishes, express the anxieties and alienation of 20th-cent. humanity. His tales, with their inscrutable mixture of the normal and the fantastic, have provoked a wealth of interpretations. Kafka's posthumous reputation and influence have been enormous, and he is regarded as one of great European writers of the 20th cent.


kalam
Islamic speculative theology. It arose during the Umayyad dynasty over varying interpretations of the Quran and over questions the Quran provoked, incl. those on predestination, free will, and the nature of God. The most prominent early school was the 8th-cent. Mutazila, which asserted the supremacy of reason, championed free will, and rejected an anthropomorphic characterization of God. The 10th-cent. school of Ashariya displaced Mutazila and moved kalam back toward traditional faith, accepting, for example, the eternal, uncreated nature of the Quran and its literal truth.


Kama
In Indian mythology, the god of love. In the Vedic age he personified cosmic desire or the creative impulse, and he was called the first-born of primeval chaos. He was later often depicted as a handsome youth attended by heavenly nymphs, who shot love-producing flower arrows from a sugarcane bow. He was once killed by Shiva, who was enraged when Kama disturbed his meditation on a mountaintop, but the great god later relented and brought Kama back to life.


kava
Nonalcoholic, yellow-green, somewhat bitter beverage made from the root of the pepper plant (mainly Piper methysticum) in most S. Pacific islands. It is traditionally consumed in the kava ceremony, which includes the ritual making and drinking of kava and a ceremonial feast. It is taken to relieve stress and anxiety and as a mood elevator.


Kaya
Tribal league formed sometime before the 3rd cent. AD in S Korea and lasting until its subjugation to Silla in the 6th cent. The people of Kaya are thought to have been closely related to the tribes that crossed over from Korea to Japan a century or two earlier, and Kaya often enlisted Japan in its feuds with neighboring Silla and Paekche. The Kaya people invented a unique 12-stringed zither, the kayagum.


kayak
Type of canoe covered by a deck except for a cockpit in which ...

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