Franz Kafka

One of the most important historical figures in the Czech Republic (Czechia) is Franz Kafka. Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer who is largely considered one of the key figures of twentieth-century literature. His work combines aspects of realism and fantasy. Among his most well-known works are the short tale "The Metamorphosis" and the novel The Trial and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to denote events similar to those described in his works.

Kafka was born in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and now the Czech Republic, into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family. He studied law and was hired full-time by an insurance business after completing his legal degree, forcing him to limit writing to his spare time.

During his lifetime, just a few of Kafka's writings were published: the story collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor, as well as individual pieces (such as "The Metamorphosis"), were published in intellectual periodicals but gained little public attention. Kafka's executor and friend Max Brod was told in his will to burn his unfinished works, including his novels The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, but Brod rejected these directions and got the majority of his work published. Throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Kafka's work impacted a wide range of writers, critics, artists, and thinkers.