Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka, ; ; ; in Czech, he was sometimes called František Kafka.}} (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and 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 surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. The term ''Kafkaesque'' has entered the lexicon to describe bizarre situations like those depicted in his writing. The domains of mystical parable and the alienating experience of urban life with its indecipherable complexities tend to overlap in his stories and sketches. His best-known works include the novella ''The Metamorphosis'' (1915) and the novels ''The Trial'' (1924) and ''The Castle'' (1926).

Though the novels and short stories that Kafka wrote are more typically referred in summary descriptions of his great works, Kafka is just as celebrated for his brief fables and aphorisms. These stories or sketches can be brutal, but their dreadfulness is frequently slapstick and notably humorous. They are sometimes noted for their resemblance to Chasidic fairy tales, in a universe where the transcendental source of authority is absent or unknowable.

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. His professional obligations led to internal conflict as he felt that his true vocation was writing. Only a minority 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 began to receive the highest possible critical acclaim when they were re-released amidst the imposition of the Nuremberg Racial Hygiene Laws in 1935 as a complete set by Schocken, however distribution and broad awareness of these works was stymied by the totalitarian atmosphere of the Nazi regime. The final volumes of this set were released after Schocken was forced to relocate to Prague. The works became more 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