Franz Kafka
- Франц Кафка
- Sort Name
- Kafka, Franz
- Ratings
- No reviews
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Male
- Date of birth
- 1883-07-03
- Place of birth
- Praha
- Date of death
- 1924-06-03
- Place of death
- Austria
Wikipedia
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague. He wrote in German and is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. It has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity. His best known works include the novella The Metamorphosis and novels The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations like those depicted in his writing.
Kafka was born into a middle-class German- and Yiddish-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today the capital of Czechia, also known as the Czech Republic). He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education was employed full-time, for a year handling cases for the indigent in the city's Provincial and Criminal Courts by an insurance company, then working for nine months for an Italian insurance company, and finally, starting in 1908, spending 14 years with the Austrian Imperial and Royal Workmen's Accident Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia and its successor under the Czechoslovak Republic, rising to the position of chief legal secretary.
Being employed full-time forced Kafka to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in obscurity in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
Kafka was a prolific writer, spending most of his free time writing, often late into the night. He burned an estimated 90 percent of his total work due to his persistent struggles with self-doubt. Much of the remaining 10 percent is lost or otherwise unpublished. Few of Kafka's works were published during his lifetime; although the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, and individual stories, such as his novella The Metamorphosis, were published in literary magazines, they received little attention.
In his will, Kafka instructed his close friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy his unfinished works, including his novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, but Brod ignored these instructions and had much of his work published. Kafka's writings became famous in German-speaking countries after World War II, influencing German literature, and its influence spread elsewhere in the world in the 1960s. It has also influenced artists, composers, and philosophers.
Annotation
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer.
Last modified: 2020-10-11 (revision #32239)
Editions
Name | Format | ISBN | Release Date |
---|---|---|---|
Das Schloß | Paperback | 3-596-20900-5 | 1982-10 |
Die Verwandlung (white box cover, Oliver Jahraus afterword) | Paperback | 978-3-15-009900-1 | 2019 |
Amerika (Fischer Bücherei, red beam) | Paperback | ? | 1967-03 |
Die Verwandlung (manuscript cover) | Paperback | 3-15-009900-5 | 2002 |
La metamorfosis y otros cuentos | Paperback | 9500396661 | 2013 |
The Metamorphosis (Stanley Corngold translation and edit) | Paperback | 9780393967975 | ? |
Briefe an Milena | Paperback | 978-3-596-25307-4 | 1986 |
Das Schloß | Hardcover | 3-353-00183-2 | 1987 |
Das Urteil und andere Erzählungen (fence cover) | Paperback | ? | 1952-11 |
Brief an den Vater | Paperback | 978-3-596-21629-1 | 1981-08-01 |
Der Prozeß | Paperback | 3-596-20676-6 | 1980-02 |
Das Urteil und andere Erzählungen (archway cover) | Paperback | ? | 1958-02 |
Die Verwandlung (white box cover, Egon Schwarz afterword) | Paperback | 978-3-15-009900-1 | 2014 |
Der Proceß (Reclam UB, yellow cover with handwriting) | Paperback | 978-3-15-009676-5 | 2011 |
Sämtliche Erzählungen (Franz Kafka, brown cover) | Paperback | ? | 1970-01 |
Sämtliche Erzählungen (Franz Kafka, cover with drawing) | Paperback | 3-596-21078-X | 1981-05 |
Превращение | Hardcover | 978-5-17-153567-4 | 2023-08 |
Erzählungen (Kafka / Brecht / Böll collection) | Paperback | ? | 1970 |
Relationships
- Franz Kafka wrote Der neue Advokat
- Franz Kafka wrote Eine kleine Frau
- Franz Kafka wrote Kleine Fabel
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Prozess
- Franz Kafka wrote Erstes Leid
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Franz Kafka: Eine Biographie
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Nachhauseweg
- Franz Kafka wrote In der Loge
- Franz Kafka is the subject of The Anatomist of Power: Franz Kafka and the Critique of Authority
- Franz Kafka wrote Das Gassenfenster
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Kreisel
- Franz Kafka wrote Letters to Felice
- Franz Kafka wrote Elf Söhne
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Φραντς Κάφκα: Ο ανατόμος της εξουσίας
- Franz Kafka wrote Fürsprecher
- Franz Kafka wrote Ein Landarzt
- Franz Kafka wrote Varianten
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Kübelreiter
- Franz Kafka wrote Ein altes Blatt
- Franz Kafka wrote Entschlüsse
- Franz Kafka wrote blurb for Erzählungen(Heinrich von Kleist)
- Franz Kafka wrote Unglücklichsein
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Gruftwächter
- Franz Kafka wrote Vor dem Gesetz
- Franz Kafka wrote Das Stadtwappen
- Franz Kafka wrote Ein Brudermord
- Franz Kafka wrote Das Schloß
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Kafka for Beginners
- Franz Kafka wrote Das nächste Dorf
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Das Symbol Kafka: Eine Studie über den Künstler
- Franz Kafka wrote Auf der Galerie
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Zimmernachbar
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Steuermann
- Franz Kafka wrote Превращение
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Fahrgast
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Franz Kafka, rêveur insoumis
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Franz Kafka: Tragik und Ironie; zur Struktur seiner Kunst
- Franz Kafka wrote Das Urteil
- Franz Kafka wrote Briefe an Felice
- Franz Kafka wrote Eine Kreuzung
- Franz Kafka is the subject of K: A Biography of Kafka
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Franz Kafkas Glauben und Lehre
- Franz Kafka wrote Großer Lärm
- Franz Kafka wrote Der Heizer
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Kafka kurz und knapp
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Verzweiflung und Erlösung im Werke Franz Kafkas
- Franz Kafka wrote Gibs auf!
- Franz Kafka is the subject of Kafka: Sein Leben, seine Welt, sein Werk
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- Last Modified
- 2024-07-21