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Franz Kafka was a novelist, whose major works are universally considered to be among the most important of the 20th century.

His novella "The Metamorphosis" and his novel "The Trial" are required reading at nearly every university.

When he died at the age of 40, however, Kafka was basically an unpublished author. Most of his work was never finished and not published until after his death.

Born in 1883 into a middle-class Jewish family in the Jewish ghetto of Prague at a time when Prague was an administrative outpost of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Kafka grew up speaking German in a city whose inhabitants mostly spoke Czech. This relationship, being a cultural and linguistic outsider in the city of his own birth, informs the sense of isolation and hopelessness that pervades his written work.
Kafka was the eldest of six children. His two brothers died in infancy. His three sisters died at concentration camps during the Holocaust.

He graduated from Charles University in 1906 with a degree in Law. It was at university that he met Max Brod, the man who would be for Kafka a life long friend and trusted confidant. In the following year, Kafka began his professional career as an insurance executive. In 1917, he was compelled to retire due to having been diagnosed with tuberculosis.

Kafka's relationship with women was atypical. In 1912 he met Felice Bauer, and the two entered into a long-distance romance, she living in Berlin and he in Prague. They were engaged to marry, despite having only met each other in person a half dozen times. The relationship did not work out. Kafka's next great romance is his most celebrated. Milena Jesenska was a Czech journalist living in Vienna when she was introduced not to Kafka, but to some of his writings. Jesenska contacted Kafka in hopes of becoming his translator. And despite having only met on a few occasions, Kafka fell in love. Jesenska clearly had feelings for Kafka, but this was arguably an one-sided love affair. After having moved to Berlin in 1923, at the age of 40, Kafka met Dora Diamant and experienced his first real relationship with a woman. Kafka died of his tuberculosis the following year.

His body was returned to Prague and buried at the Jewish Cemetery in the Vinohrady district of Prague.

Kafka's body of writing was given to his life long friend Max Brod. Kafka's written instructions were to burn them, but Brod clearly understood the true meaning. He had them commercially published. (If Kafka had truly wanted them to be burned, Brod was the last person to entrust, given that Brod was a published writer himself, had connections in the publishing industry, and had been encouraging Kafka to write and publish during the entire length of their friendship.)

Today, Franz Kafka's relationship with his hometown of Prague is a bit cynical. Most Czechs have never read his work because he wrote in German, and German language literature is looked down upon in the Czech Republic. It is true that in the Center of Prague, Franz Kafka's image can be found in nearly every gift shop, but please don't be fooled. In Prague, Franz Kafka is for the tourists, not for Czechs. When a local Czech television station sponsored a public contest to identify the 10 Greatest Czechs in History, Franz Kafka was not eligible because he's not considered Czech.

Learn more about this author, Thos Robert.
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