Franz Kafka (1883—1924) was born into a German-speaking family in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He earned a law degree and worked as a claims investigator for an insurance company, writing his fiction after work in the evenings and late into the night. He published little during his lifetime, most importantly The Metamorphosis (1915) and The Penal Colony (1919). Kafka's three novels were published posthumously: The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926), and Amerika (1927). The adjective "Kafkaesque" has been coined to describe the strange and disturbing features of reality as they reflect the world of Kafka's fiction.

Major works by Kafka

Kafka and the Web

This is the homepage of the Kafka Project, and a good place to start your research. It offers photos and numerous links to Kafka-related resources on the web.

Take a virtual literary walking tour of Franz Kafka's Prague with Marilyn Bender of the New York Society Library.

View pages and review for Peter Kuper's illustrated edition of The Metamorphosis, published in 2003 by Crown.