Franz Kafka Biography

Biography

Type: Novelist

Born: 3 July 1883

Died: 3 June 1924

Born on July 3, 1883, in Prague, capital of what is now the Czech Republic, writer Franz Kafka grew up in an upper middle-class Jewish family. After studying law at the University of Prague, he worked in insurance and wrote in the evenings. In 1923, he moved to Berlin to focus on writing, but died of tuberculosis shortly after. German was his first language. In fact, despite his Czech background and Jewish roots, Kafka's identity favored German culture. His friend Max Brod published most of his work posthumously, such as "Amerika" and "The Castle".

Kafka's work went on to influence a vast range of writers, critics, artists, and philosophers during the 20th century.

  • The Trial
  • The Castle
  • The Metamorphosis
  • Amerika

Franz Kafka Quotes

The Kafka paradox: art depends on truth, but truth, being indivisable, cannot know itself: to tell the truth is to lie. thus the writer is the truth, and yet when he speaks he lies.

Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think, I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.

Writing is utter solitude, the descent into the cold abyss of oneself.

I need solitude for my writing; not 'like a hermit' - that wouldn't be enough - but like a dead man.

This tremendous world I have inside of me. How to free myself, and this world, without tearing myself to pieces. And rather tear myself to a thousand pieces than be buried with this world within me.

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