Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a middle-class Jewish family. He earned a law degree and worked for an insurance company, a job that informed his bleak, bureaucratic landscapes. Kafka’s literary output, though modest in volume, is monumental in influence. His published stories include The Metamorphosis (1915), in which a traveling salesman wakes as an insect, and collections like A Hunger Artist. His three unfinished novels—The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika—were published after his death by his friend Max Brod, defying Kafka’s request to burn them. Kafka died of tuberculosis on June 3, 1924, at age 40. His works, characterized by precise prose and nightmarish logic, gave rise to the term “Kafkaesque.” They have profoundly shaped modern literature, philosophy, and existential thought.