India’s Top Economist Slaps Dark Side of Invisible Hand: Books

Franz Kafka had something in common with Adam Smith, the father of modern economics. They shared a vision of a system running on its own steam, writes Kaushik Basu in his alluring new book, “Beyond the Invisible Hand.”

Smith’s system was benevolent, of course -- an “invisible hand” guiding the economy -- while Kafka’s was malevolent and surreal: Arrested and prosecuted, Joseph K runs from bureaucrat to bureaucrat in “The Trial,” trying to learn what crime he has supposedly committed in a society with no central authority.