Franz Kafka was born in 1883 to a Jewish family in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He studied law at university and became an insurance agent. His diaries and letters reveal a deep sense of disillusionment and inadequacy that plagued him throughout his life. He had several love affairs but never married. When he was 34 years old, Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis, a condition that would ultimately lead to his death at 40.

Kafka began writing at a young age, though he published little during his lifetime. Among the few works Kafka did complete and publish before his death are his novella The Metamorphosis and the short stories “The Judgment” and “A Hunger Artist.” He was notoriously self-critical and destroyed most of his work. Before he died, he asked his close friend and executor, Max Brod, to burn all his remaining works unread. Brod disregarded this request, however, and as a result several of Kafka’s most famous works—including The Castle and The Trial—were published after the author’s death.

Though Kafka’s works initially attracted little attention from either readers or critics, they are now counted among the most important works of 20th-century literature, displaying elements of

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