Franz Kafka

Bohemian · 1883–1924

A German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. Trained as a lawyer, he worked for most of his life as an insurance clerk in Prague while writing in the evenings. He published only a handful of stories during his lifetime — including The Metamorphosis (1915) — and remained largely unknown. On his deathbed he instructed his friend Max Brod to burn his unpublished manuscripts; Brod refused, instead bringing The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika to print posthumously. His name has since become an adjective ("Kafkaesque") for situations of absurd, opaque bureaucratic menace.

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