Franz Kafka

Born in Prague in 1883, Franz Kafka wrote in German and grew up in a Jewish family in what was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied law and worked in insurance, writing in the margins of a demanding working life.

Kafka is now one of the central figures of 20th-century literature. His fiction often places ordinary people inside baffling, threatening systems, and his best-known works include The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle.

During his lifetime, only a small part of his writing was published. After he died in 1924, his friend Max Brod preserved and published much of the work that established Kafka's lasting reputation.