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Franz Kafka

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Born: July 02 1883

Died: 0202 06 19241924

Franz Kafka was one of the major fiction writers of the 20th century. He was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Bohemia , Austria–Hungary. His unique body of writing—much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously—is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature.

His stories include "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony" , while his novels are The Trial , The Castle and Amerika .

Kafka's first language was German, but he was also fluent in Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture; one of his favorite authors was Flaubert.

Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague, but switched after two weeks to law. This offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, who would become a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.

Kafka's writing attracted little attention until after his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels, unless "The Metamorphosis" is considered a novel. Prior to his death, Kafka wrote to his friend and literary executor Max Brod: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters , sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod overrode Kafka's wishes, believing that Kafka had given these directions to him specifically because Kafka knew he would not honor them—Brod had told him as much. Brod, in fact, would oversee the publication of most of Kafka's work in his possession, which soon began to attract attention and high critical regard.

Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling Kafka's notebooks into any chronological order as Kafka was known to start writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, etc.

All of Kafka's published works, except several letters he wrote in Czech to Milena Jesenská, were written in German.

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Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka

Books from Franz Kafka

The Metamorphosis

The Trial

The Metamorphosis and Other Stories

The Castle

Franz Kafka's The Castle (Dramatization)

The Complete Stories

Amerika

The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories: The Great Short Works of Franz Kafka

In the Penal Colony

A Hunger Artist

Letter to His Father

The Metamorphosis (Graphic Novel Adaptation)

A Country Doctor

The Judgment

Diaries, 1910-1923

Franz Kafka, Die Verwandlung

Investigations of a Dog

المحاكمة

Milena'ya Mektuplar

Contemplation