FRANZ / 1883–1924
Kafka’s corner.
Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883. He studied law, worked for years at an accident-insurance institute, and wrote in German. His published and posthumous work has made him one of literature’s most familiar strangers.
His worlds are full of rooms, offices, doors, letters, and people trying to understand rules no one will explain. There is horror in them, but also an odd, dry sort of humour. It can feel as though a bureaucrat has been given charge of your soul.
He died in 1924, aged forty. Much of the writing for which he is now known appeared after his death, in part thanks to his friend Max Brod.
For dates and places: Franz Kafka Museum’s timeline ↗
A FEW BOOKS TO BEGIN WITH
On the bedside table
The Metamorphosis
For the terrible business of becoming strange in your own home.
The Trial
For the nightmare of being accused without being told why.
The Castle
For doors that never quite open and authorities that never quite appear.
Letters to Milena
For the private, searching, very human voice behind the fiction.
A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
One is tempted to make Kafka entirely out of sadness. I prefer to remember there was a person there, too: a face, a laugh, a life quite beyond the books.