Franz Kafka was a Prague-born, German-Jewish novelist and short-story writer. He is best known for his signature literary sensibility, which combines the styles of realism, absurdism, surrealism, and humor with thematic interests in alienation, guilt, existentialism, and oppressive bureaucracy. His most widely read books are The Trial, The Castle, and The Metamorphosis, the last of which depicts a man who wakes up one morning to discover that he has transformed into a giant insect.
Born to a middle-class family in the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia (known today as the Czech Republic), Kafka pursued a legal education before working at an insurance company. Because of his full-time work...
