Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka was a German language writer born in Prague. He worked in an insurance office and wrote in his spare time, publishing little in his lifetime. His novella The Metamorphosis, in which a salesman wakes up transformed into an insect, appeared in 1915. He died of tuberculosis in 1924. His friend Max Brod, against Kafka's instructions, published the novels The Trial and The Castle, and the word Kafkaesque is now used for confusing, oppressive situations.