Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th Century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and thefantastic. His best known works include the short story The Metamorphosis and novels The Trail and The Castle. The term Kafkaesque has entered English to describe absurd situations, like those depicted in his writing.
He trained as a lawyer and after completing his legal education was employed full-time by an insurance company, forcing him to relegate writing to his spare time. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship. He became engaged to several women but never married. He died in obscurity in 1924 at the age of 40 from tuberculosis.
