Franz Kafka
A 20th-century Czech writer whose fictional descriptions of the surreal situations into which people can fall gave rise to the word “Kafkaesque”
Franz Kafka is widely regarded as one of the most influential writers of the early 20th century, not least on major writers such as Samuel Beckett and Albert Camus. The word “Kafkaesque” has been coined to describe a form of distorted, surreal reality that can apply to the workings of government and officialdom. This derives from descriptions of such circumstances in his works.
Franz Kafka was born on 3rd July 1883 in Prague, which was then in the Bohemian region of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His parents were German-speaking Jews. He graduated in law, but always wanted to be a writer. However, for most of his working life he was employed as an official in the accident prevention department of the government-sponsored Worker’s Accident Insurance Institution, which gave him plenty of experience of “Kafkaesque” situations.
His personal life was never easy, due largely to his introspection, hypersensitivity, and inability to form meaningful relationships. He never married, although he did find happiness towards the end of his life when he lived in Berlin with a kindergarten teacher named Dora Diamant.
