Search Results - Kafka, Franz 1883-1924

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka, ; ; ; in Czech, he was sometimes called František Kafka.}} (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a Jewish Austrian-Czech novelist and writer from Prague who wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastique, and typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best-known works include the novella ''The Metamorphosis'' (1915) and the novels ''The Trial'' (1924) and ''The Castle'' (1926). The term ''Kafkaesque'' has entered the English lexicon to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing.

Kafka was born into a middle-class German- and Yiddish-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which belonged to the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (now the capital of the Czech Republic). He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education was employed full-time in various legal and insurance jobs. Being employed full-time forced Kafka to relegate writing to his spare time. Few of his works were published during his life; the story-collections ''Contemplation'' (1912) and ''A Country Doctor'' (1919), and individual stories, such as his novella ''The Metamorphosis'', were published in literary magazines, but they received little attention. He wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died relatively unknown in 1924 of tuberculosis, aged 40.

Kafka was a prolific writer, but he burned an estimated 90 percent of his total work due to persistent struggles with self-doubt. Much of the remaining 10 percent is lost or otherwise unpublished. In his will, Kafka instructed his close friend and literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels ''The Trial'', ''The Castle'', and (1927), but Brod ignored these instructions and had much of his work published. Kafka's writings became famous in German-speaking countries after World War II, influencing German literature, and its influence spread elsewhere in the world in the 1960s. It has also influenced artists, composers, and philosophers. Provided by Wikipedia