Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a Czech-born writer working almost entirely in German, widely regarded as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century. Born in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, into a German-speaking Jewish family, he worked much of his life as an insurance officer while writing fiction largely in isolation. Very little of his work was published during his lifetime, and it drew scarce attention from critics or the public.

Kafka's fiction is defined by nightmarish scenarios of bureaucratic persecution, alienation, guilt, and the sudden intrusion of the fantastic into ordinary life — qualities so distinctive that «Kafkaesque» entered common language. His novella «The Metamorphosis», in which a man wakes to find himself transformed into an insect, along with parables such as «A Little Fable» and «Before the Law» (later folded into his novel «The Trial»), remain among the most studied works of modern literature.

On his deathbed, dying of tuberculosis, Kafka instructed his friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn his unpublished manuscripts. Brod ignored the request and instead edited and published Kafka's novels and stories posthumously, securing his lasting reputation as a foundational figure of modernist and existentialist fiction.