Franz Kafka was a Czech writer and one of the most important literary figures of the twentieth century. He was born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the eldest of six children in a wealthy Jewish family. During his childhood, he was deeply affected by the deaths of two of his brothers, as well as by the constant conflicts with his father, a businessman who expected his firstborn son to take over the family enterprise.
Kafka, however, had a passion for literature and no interest in commerce. He studied law at the University of Prague, worked for one year at an insurance company, and later spent ten years at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute, while devoting all of his free time to writing. He contracted tuberculosis and was periodically hospitalized or moved to the countryside in search of a healthier climate.
Because of his illness, in 1917 he finally ended his relationship with a woman to whom he had been engaged twice, and in 1922 he resigned from his position. That same year, he entered a sanatorium in an attempt to fight the disease, but without success. He died there on June 3, 1924.
Before his death, Kafka asked his closest friend to burn all of his manuscripts. His friend disobeyed him and, instead of destroying them, ensured that they were published. It was through this act that the world came to know Franz Kafka and his work, in which the element of the absurd predominates. In most of his writings, he portrays the anxiety and struggle of the marginalized individual who, no matter how hard he tries to resist, ultimately cannot escape a superior force that overwhelms and crushes him.
