In The Castle (German: Das Schloss) a man who is simply called “K” (the first letter of “Kafka”) arrives at a castle saying that he has been given a job there, but the people there say they have not been told about his appointment. Even the priest tells him that if he asks what he has done wrong it proves that he is guilty.
#FRANZ KAFKA BIOGRAPHY TRIAL#
In The Trial (German: Der Prozess, published in 1925), a man who works in a bank is arrested and taken to court. He is quiet and timid and other people use him. His novel Amerika (published in 1927) is about a man who arrives in America looking for a father figure to protect him.
#FRANZ KAFKA BIOGRAPHY FULL#
They are full of strange and frightening situations. His family becomes ashamed of him and they stop looking after him so that he slowly dies. Gregor wakes up one morning to find he has changed into a giant cockroach. It is about a man called Gregor Samsa (the name “Samsa” means "loner" or "lonely"). One of these works was a story called Metamorphosis (German: Die Verwandlung). Kafka reluctantly let a few things be published. Several publishers realized how good Kafka’s writings were and asked him whether they could publish his works. He found the office work boring, and he spent his nights writing. He was good at his job although he hated it. Brod was a writer himself, and he later wrote a biography of Kafka.Īfter his studies Kafka took a job in an insurance company. It was while he was studying law at the University of Prague that he met Max Brod who was to become his friend. He supported Czechs who wanted to rule their own country and let their culture flourish, but he was not one of them because he himself was brought up in a German culture. He said that he was a socialist and an atheist, but although he was interested in politics he never took part in political activity.
He was different because he was Jewish, but he did not become part of the Jewish community either. He was German-speaking but lived in a Czech-speaking country ( Bohemia, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of the Czech Republic). He found it difficult to make friends, he hated his job and everyone around him. He wrote about people who are dominated by some mysterious power.
#FRANZ KAFKA BIOGRAPHY FREE#
He never married or became free from his parents. Kafka spent most of his life living at home. Kafka’s stories often have fathers who are very brutal and unkind. He was very strict and unkind to his family. Kafka was born into a middle-class Jewish family. Sometimes, when people find themselves in strange, nightmarish situations like this, they are described as Kafkaesque situations.
The people he meets confuse him even more. A typical situation in his books might be someone who has gone somewhere to take a message, but he does not know what the message is or who it is for. Kafka’s writings are about the frightening world around him which he often did not understand. Fortunately his friend did not destroy them, and they were published after Kafka’s death. He asked his friend to make sure that all his writings which were not published, including his three novels, would be destroyed when he died. Not much of his work was published during his lifetime. His best known works are The Metamorphosis and the novels The Trial and The Castle. Franz Kafka (born Prague J– died near Vienna June 3, 1924) was a Czech-born, German-speaking writer.
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