Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was born to a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, a man who belonged to no majority anywhere. His father was a domineering businessman; their relationship, detailed in Kafka's never-delivered 'Letter to His Father,' was the wound that never healed. Kafka studied law, worked for an insurance company assessing workplace accidents (he was good at it, even pioneering safety reforms), and wrote at night, sleeping little, ruining his health. He was engaged three times, broke off each engagement, remained unmarried. He published little in his lifetime, The Metamorphosis, a few stories, and instructed his friend Max Brod to burn everything else at his death. Brod disobeyed, and the world received The Trial, The Castle, and stories that defined a new way of seeing.