Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was an author. Though largely forgotten within his lifetime, Kafka has become one of the most well-known authors of the early 20th century.
Life[]
Kafka was born in Prague in July of 1883. His father was a merchant who was rather abusive to his son.[1] While he was in elementary school, several of Kafka's siblings (including his sisters Elli, Valli, and Ottla along with two brothers who died as infants) were born.
When he was ten, Kafka entered into the Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium. Within the Gymnasium, Kafka met several of his lifelong friends (most notably Max Brod and Hugo Bergmann) and wrote his earliest stories, all of which were destroyed.
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Writing style[]
Kafka's works are known for their fantastical and disturbing subversions of everyday parts of life and ridiculously bureaucratic societies. Other notable trends include father figures and references to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve and the Tower of Babel (most notably in The Great Wall of China and some of his vignettes).
Kafka famously struggled with perfectionism - burning a large chunk of his works and asking his close friend Max Brod to burn any unpublished works shortly before his death (an offer Brod refused). Kafka's short stories A Hunger Artist and Josephine the Singer talk about the struggles of the artist.
Notable works[]
- Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way (or The Zürau Aphorisms)
- Letter to His Father
Novels and novellas[]
- The Metamorphosis - a novella about a man who is transformed into a cockroach.
- Der Process (or The Trial)
- Das Schloss (or The Castle)
- Amerika - Kafka's first attempt at a novel, published in an incomplete state posthumonously.
Short stories, vignettes, fables, and parables[]
- The Judgment (1912) - a short story about a man's relationship with his father.
- A Fratricide (1917) - a vignette about a murder.
- A Report to an Academy (1917) - a short story about an ape that learns to be human.
- A Country Doctor (1919) - a short story about the titular doctor visiting a patient.
- Poseidon (1920) - a vignette about the titular mythological figure.
- The Bucket Rider (1921) - a vignette about a man trying to get coal.
- A Hunger Artist (1922) - a short story about the titular "hunger artist" and his last years.
- The Next Village (1923?) - a vignette about the shortness of life.
- Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk (1924) - a short story about a singer who captivates a race of mice folk.
- The Great Wall of China (1930) - a short story about the construction of the titular wall.
- The Burrow (1931) - a short story about a mole-like creature.
- Prometheus (1931) - a vignette about the titular mythological figure.
- The Problem of Our Laws (1931) - a parable about laws.
- A Little Fable (1931) - a fable about a mouse whose world slowly shrinks.
- On Parables (1931) - a parable about parables.
- Give it Up! (1936) - a vignette about a man trying to get somewhere in a hurry.
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Appearances in fiction[]
- Kafka appears in Matt Fitton's Diary of River Song audio drama Whodunnit - in which he helps River Song to defeat the Discordia by creating a simulation shortly before his death. Kafka's works are also mentioned in Daniel O'Mahony's Doctor Who (or Time Hunter) novella The Cabinet of Light and Eric Saward's novelization of the audio drama Slipback.
See also[]
- Gustave Flaubert
- Fyodor Dostoevsky
- Nikolai Gogol
- Franz Grillparzer
- Heinrich von Kleist
- Edgar Allan Poe
- Thomas Mann
- H.P. Lovecraft
Sources[]
- Wikipedia
- Erich Heller's introduction to The Basic Kafka
- ↑ Franz Kafka's Letter to His Father