Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a German-language Jewish writer from Prague. He was born near the Old Town Square into a middle-class family and grew up speaking Standard German in a country where most people spoke Czech; he also spoke and wrote Czech. He trained as a lawyer and worked in legal and insurance jobs, though he felt his true vocation was writing. He never married, and his relationship with his authoritarian father, explored in his long Brief an den Vater, shaped his work. He died of tuberculosis in Kierling, aged 40.

Only a minority of his work appeared in his lifetime, including the collections Contemplation and A Country Doctor and stories in literary magazines. His friend Max Brod ignored his wish to destroy the rest and published it, to eventual acclaim. Kafka's writing blends realism with the fantastic, often placing isolated protagonists in bizarre predicaments and facing incomprehensible bureaucratic powers. His best-known works are The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle. The word Kafkaesque comes from his name, and his influence reaches across literature, philosophy, film and music.

Reading Franz Kafka to learn German

Kafka wrote in the early twentieth century, yet his German is remarkably clean and pure, without the slang or passing fashions of his contemporaries in Vienna or Berlin. That makes it a steady model for a learner, since you will meet standard vocabulary rather than dated colloquialisms. His stories mix everyday realistic detail with strange events, so the scenes are concrete even when the situation is surreal. Start with Die Verwandlung, the only Kafka book on Paralelo at present. It takes about 88 minutes to read, and with the English beside it, aligned phrase by phrase, you can check your understanding as you go. Expect some demanding passages, but the clarity of his language helps.