Vladimir Nabokov claimed that, at the time he wrote Invitation to a Beheading, he had not read Kafka’s work. Nevertheless, Invitation to a Beheading shares many of Kafka’s own preoccupations, especially his interest in bureaucracies, which he often portrays as nightmarishly complex, absurd, or illogical. Cincinnatus C., as the victim of one such irrational bureaucracy, is accused of “gnostical turpitude,” a vague but apparently very serious crime—so serious, in fact, that it is unsayable; the judge who condemns Cincinnatus does so via traditional “circumlocutions,” creating further vagueness and uncertainty around the charge. Cincinnatus is sentenced to death for a crime he does not understand, punished by a bureaucracy that values tradition over his life and over any semblance of judicial integrity. Most maddening for Cincinnatus, however, is that he is not told the date of his execution. The system is so inefficient that his jailors admit that even his jailors admit they do not know when he will be executed.

The bureaucratic process is respected above all else, even though it makes little sense. The meaning and the motivation behind the city’s traditions are lost, but they are still followed meticulously. Ironically, Pierre has a bout of food poisoning as a consequence of one bureaucratic formality, the dinner at the city fathers’ house.