Franz Kafka

Kafka in 1923

Born| (1883-07-03)3 July 1883

Prague, Austria-Hungary

Died| 3 June 1924(1924-06-03) (aged 40)

Klosterneuburg, Austria

Burial place| New Jewish Cemetery, Prague
Citizenship|

* Austria (until 1918)[lower-alpha 1]
* Czechoslovakia (from 1918)[1][2]

Alma mater| German Charles-Ferdinand University
Occupation|

* Novelist
* short story writer
* insurance officer

Works

| List
Style| Modernism
Signature

Franz Kafka[lower-alpha 2] (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.[4] Widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature, his works fuse elements of realism and the fantastique,[5] and typically feature isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. The term Kafkaesque has entered the lexicon to describe situations like those depicted in his writings.[6] His best-known works include the novella The Metamorphosis (1915) and the novels The Trial (1924) and The Castle (1926). He is also celebrated for his brief fables and aphorisms, which frequently incorporated comedic elements alongside the darker themes of his longer works.[7][lower-alpha 3] His work has widely influenced artists, philosophers, composers, filmmakers, literary historians, religious scholars, and cultural theorists.

Kafka was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, which belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire (later the capital of Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic).[9][10] He trained as a lawyer, and after completing his legal education was employed full-time in various legal and insurance jobs.[11] His professional obligations led to internal conflict as he felt that his true vocation was writing. Only a minority of his works were published during his life; the story collections Contemplation (1912) and A Country Doctor (1919), and individual stories, such as his novella The Metamorphosis, were published in literary magazines, but they received little attention. He 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 relatively unknown in 1924 of tuberculosis, aged 40. His literary executor and friend Max Brod ignored Kafka's wishes to destroy his remaining works, publishing them to eventual acclaim.

## Contents

* 1 Life
* 1.1 Early life
* 1.2 Education
* 1.3 Employment
* 1.4 Personal life
* 1.5 Siblings
* 1.6 Personality
* 1.7 Political views
* 1.8 Judaism and Zionism
* 2 Death
* 3 Works
* 3.1 Stories
* 3.2 Novels
* 3.3 Drawings
* 3.4 Publishing history
* 3.4.1 Max Brod
* 3.4.2 Modern editions
* 3.4.3 Unpublished papers
* 4 Critical response
* 4.1 After-death biographies and critiques
* 4.2 Critical interpretations
* 4.3 Translations
* 4.3.1 Translation problems to English
* 5 Legacy
* 5.1 Literary and cultural influence
* 5.2 "Kafkaesque"
* 5.3 Commemorations
* 6 Notes
* 7 References
* 7.1 Citations
* 7.2 Sources
* 8 Further reading
* 9 External links

## Life

### Early life

Franz Kafka's parents, Hermann and Julie Kafka

Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family were German-speaking middle-class Ashkenazi Jews. His father, Hermann Kafka, was the fourth child of Jakob Kafka,[12][13] a shochet or kosher butcher in Osek, a Czech village with a large Jewish population located near Strakonice in southern Bohemia.[14] Hermann "came to Prague in the 1870s and opened a store selling haberdashery and ladies' accessories".[15] He employed up to 15 people and used the image of a jackdaw (kavka in Czech, pronounced and colloquially written as kafka) as his business logo.[16] Kafka's mother, Julie, was the daughter of Jakob Löwy, a "cloth-maker in Humpolec in eastern Bohemia".[15]

Kafka's parents, from traditional Jewish society, spoke German replete with influences from their native Yiddish; their children, raised in an acculturated environment, spoke Standard German.[17] The cleanliness and "almost platonic purity"[18] of Kafka's German may derive from the fact that he grew up speaking the language in a country whose primary language was not German.[18] His prose is not marked by slang or fads of contemporary usage that was typical of his generational peers from the heart of the empire in Vienna or, for that matter, from the center of the Second Reich in Berlin.[18]

Kafka at about ten with his sisters Valli (left) and Elli (center)

Hermann and Julie had six children, of whom Franz was the eldest.[19] Franz's two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy before Franz was seven; his three sisters were Gabriele ("Elli"), Valerie ("Valli") and Ottilie ("Ottla"). All three were murdered in the Holocaust of World War II. Valli was deported to the Łódź Ghetto in occupied Poland in 1942, but that is the last documentation of her; it is assumed she did not survive the war. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister.[20]

Hermann is described by Kafka scholar and translator Stanley Corngold as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman"[21] and by Franz Kafka as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature, a certain way of doing things on a grand scale, of course also with all the defects and weaknesses that go with these advantages and into which your temperament and sometimes your hot temper drive you".[22] On business days, both parents were absent from the home, with Julie Kafka working as many as 12 hours each day helping to manage the family business. Consequently, Kafka's childhood was somewhat lonely,[23] and the children were reared largely by a series of governesses and servants. Kafka's troubled relationship with his father is evident in his Brief an den Vater (Letter to His Father) of more than 100 pages, in which he complains of being profoundly affected by his father's authoritarian and demanding character;[24] his mother, in contrast, was quiet and shy.[25] The dominating figure of Kafka's father had a significant influence on Kafka's writing.[26]

The Kafka family had a servant girl living with them in a cramped apartment.[27] Franz's room was often cold. In November 1913, the family moved into a bigger apartment, although Ellie and Valli had married and moved out of the first apartment. In early August 1914, just after World War I began, the sisters did not know where their husbands were in the military and moved back in with the family in this larger apartment. Both Ellie and Valli also had children. Franz at age 31 moved into Valli's former apartment, quiet by contrast, and lived by himself for the first time.[28]

### Education

Kinský Palace where Kafka attended gymnasium and his father owned a shop

From 1889 to 1893, Kafka attended the German boys' elementary school at the Masný trh/Fleischmarkt (meat market), now known as Masná Street. His Jewish education ended with his bar mitzvah celebration at the age of 13. Kafka never enjoyed attending the synagogue and went with his father only on four high holidays each year.[22][29][30]

After leaving elementary school in 1893, Kafka was admitted to the rigorous classics-oriented state gymnasium, Altstädter Deutsches Gymnasium, an academic secondary school at Old Town Square, located within Kinský Palace. German was the language of instruction, but Kafka also spoke and wrote in Czech.[31][32] He studied the latter at the gymnasium for eight years, achieving good grades.[33] Kafka received compliments for his Czech, but never considered himself fluent in the language. He spoke German with a Czech accent.[1][32] He completed his Matura exams in 1901.[34]

Kafka was admitted to the Deutsche Karl-Ferdinands-Universität of Prague in 1901. He was originally admitted for philosophy, and he had additionally signed up for chemistry.[35] Kafka began studying chemistry but switched to law after two weeks.[36] Although this field did not excite him, it offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father. In addition, law required a longer course of study, giving Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history.[37] He also joined a student club, Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten (Reading and Lecture Hall of the German students), which organised literary events, readings and other activities.[38] Among Kafka's friends were the journalist Felix Weltsch, who studied philosophy, the actor Yitzchak Lowy who came from an orthodox Hasidic Warsaw family, and the writers Ludwig Winder, Oskar Baum and Franz Werfel.[39]

At the end of his first year of studies, Kafka met Max Brod, a fellow law student who became a close friend for life.[38] Years later, Brod coined the term Der enge Prager Kreis ("The Close Prague Circle") to describe the group of writers, which included Kafka, Felix Weltsch and Brod himself.[40][41] Brod soon noticed that, although Kafka was shy and seldom spoke, what he said was usually profound.[42] Kafka was an avid reader throughout his life;[43] together he and Brod read Plato's Protagoras in the original Greek, on Brod's initiative, and Gustave Flaubert's L'éducation sentimentale and La Tentation de St. Antoine (The Temptation of Saint Anthony) in French, at his own suggestion.[44] Kafka considered Fyodor Dostoevsky,[45] Flaubert, Nikolai Gogol, Franz Grillparzer,[46] and Heinrich von Kleist to be his "true blood brothers".[47] Besides these, he took an interest in Czech literature[31][32] and was also fond of the works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe,[48][49] though his "admiration for Goethe was, however, somewhat ambivalent: 'By the power of his works Goethe probably holds back the development of the German language.'"[50] Kafka was awarded the degree of Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906[lower-alpha 4] and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as a law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.[6]

### Employment

Former home of the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute

On 1 November 1907, Kafka was employed at the Assicurazioni Generali, an insurance company, where he worked for nearly a year. His correspondence during that period indicates that he was unhappy with a work schedule—from 08:00 until 18:00[57][58]—that made it extremely difficult to concentrate on writing, which was assuming increasing importance to him. On 15 July 1908, he resigned. Two weeks later, he found employment more amenable to writing when he joined the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia (Úrazová pojišťovna dělnická pro Čechy v Praze). The job involved investigating and assessing compensation for personal injury to industrial workers; accidents such as lost fingers or limbs were commonplace, owing to poor work safety policies at the time. It was especially true of factories fitted with machine lathes, drills, planing machines and rotary saws, which were rarely fitted with safety guards.[59]

His father often referred to his son's job as an insurance officer as a Brotberuf, literally "bread job", a job done only to pay the bills; Kafka often claimed to despise it. Kafka was rapidly promoted and his duties included processing and investigating compensation claims, writing reports, and handling appeals from businessmen who thought their firms had been placed in too high a risk category, which cost them more in insurance premiums.[60] He would compile and compose the annual report on the insurance institute for the several years he worked there. The reports were well received by his superiors.[61] Kafka usually got off work at 2 p.m., so that he had time to spend on his literary work, to which he was committed.[62] Kafka's father also expected him to help out at and take over the family fancy goods store.[63] In his later years, Kafka's illness often prevented him from working at the insurance bureau and at his writing.

In late 1911, Elli's husband Karl Hermann and Kafka became partners in the first asbestos factory in Prague, known as Prager Asbestwerke Hermann & Co., having used dowry money from Hermann Kafka. Kafka showed a positive attitude at first, dedicating much of his free time to the business, but he later resented the encroachment of this work on his writing time.[64] During that period, he also found interest and entertainment in the performances of Yiddish theatre. After seeing a Yiddish theatre troupe perform in October 1911, for the next six months Kafka "immersed himself in Yiddish language and in Yiddish literature".[65] This interest also served as a starting point for his growing exploration of Judaism.[66] It was at about this time that Kafka became a vegetarian.[67] Around 1915, Kafka received his draft notice for military service in World War I, but his employers at the insurance institute arranged for a deferment because his work was considered essential government service. He later attempted to join the military but was prevented from doing so by medical problems associated with tuberculosis,[68] with which he was diagnosed in 1917.[69] In 1918, the Worker's Accident Insurance Institute put Kafka on a pension due to his illness, for which there was no cure at the time, and he spent most of the rest of his life in sanatoriums.[6]

### Personal life

Felice Bauer and Franz Kafka

Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire[70] and filled with a fear of "sexual failure".[71] Kafka visited brothels for most of his adult life,[72][73][74] and his collection of erotica and pornographic photographs demonstrates a connoisseur's range of interest in the genre.[75] In addition, he had close relationships with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer, a relative of Brod's, who worked in Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company. A week after the meeting at Brod's home, Kafka wrote in his diary:

> Miss FB. When I arrived at Brod's on 13 August, she was sitting at the table. I was not at all curious about who she was, but rather took her for granted at once. Bony, empty face that wore its emptiness openly. Bare throat. A blouse thrown on. Looked very domestic in her dress although, as it turned out, she by no means was. (I alienate myself from her a little by inspecting her so closely…) Almost broken nose. Blonde, somewhat straight, unattractive hair, strong chin. As I was taking my seat I looked at her closely for the first time, by the time I was seated I already had an unshakeable opinion.[76][77]

Shortly after this meeting, Kafka wrote the story "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment") in only one night and in a productive period worked on Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared) and Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis). Kafka and Felice Bauer communicated mostly through letters over the next five years, met occasionally, and were engaged twice.[78] Kafka's extant letters to Bauer were published as Briefe an Felice (Letters to Felice); her letters did not survive.[76][79][80] After he had written to Bauer's father asking to marry her, Kafka wrote in his diary:

> My job is unbearable to me because it conflicts with my only desire and my only calling, which is literature… I am nothing but literature and can and want to be nothing else.... Nervous states of the worst sort control me without pause… A marriage could not change me, just as my job cannot change me.[81]

According to the biographers Stach and James Hawes, Kafka became engaged a third time around 1920, to Julie Wohryzek, a poor and uneducated hotel chambermaid.[78][82] Kafka's father objected to Wohryzek because of her Zionist beliefs. Although Kafka and Wohryzek rented a flat and set a wedding date, the marriage never took place. During this time, Kafka began a draft of Letter to His Father. Before the date of the intended marriage, he took up with yet another woman.[83]

Stach and Brod state that during the time that Kafka knew Felice Bauer, he had an affair with a friend of hers, Margarethe "Grete" Bloch,[84] a Jewish woman from Berlin. Brod says that Bloch gave birth to Kafka's son, although Kafka never knew about the child. The boy, whose name is not known, was born in 1914 or 1915 and died in Munich in 1921.[85][86] However, Kafka's biographer Peter-André Alt says that, while Bloch had a son, Kafka was not the father, as the pair were never intimate.[87][88] Stach notes contradictory evidence as to whether Kafka was the father.[89]

Kafka was diagnosed with tuberculosis in August 1917 and moved for a few months to the Bohemian village of Zürau (Siřem in Czech), where his sister Ottla worked on the farm of her brother-in-law Karl Hermann. He felt comfortable there and later described this time as perhaps the best period of his life, probably because he had no responsibilities. He kept diaries and made notes in exercise books (Oktavhefte). From those notes, Kafka extracted 109 numbered pieces of text on single pieces of paper (Zettel); these were later published as Die Zürauer Aphorismen oder Betrachtungen über Sünde, Hoffnung, Leid und den wahren Weg (The Zürau Aphorisms or Reflections on Sin, Hope, Suffering, and the True Way).[90]

In 1920, Kafka began an intense relationship with Milena Jesenská, a Czech journalist and writer who was non-Jewish and who was married, but whose marriage, when she met Kafka, was a "sham".[91] His letters to her were later published as Briefe an Milena.[92] During a vacation in July 1923 to Graal-Müritz on the Baltic Sea, Kafka met Dora Diamant, a 25-year-old kindergarten teacher from an orthodox Jewish family. Kafka, hoping to escape the influence of his family to concentrate on his writing, moved briefly to Berlin (September 1923-March 1924) and lived with Diamant. She became his lover and reignited his interest in the Talmud.[93] He completed four stories, which were published shortly after his death under the title of one of them, Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist).[92]

### Siblings

Franz Kafka's sisters as children, from the left Valli, Elli, Ottla

Kafka's parents had six children; Franz was the eldest.[19] His two brothers, Georg and Heinrich, died in infancy; his three sisters, Gabriele ("Elli") (22 September 1889 – fall of 1942), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1942) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943), are believed to have been murdered in the Holocaust of the Second World War. Ottilie was Kafka's favourite sister.[94]

Gabriele was Kafka's eldest sister. She was known as Elli or Ellie; her married name is variously rendered as Hermann or Hermannová. She attended a German girls' school in Prague's Řeznická Street and later a private girls' secondary school.[95] She married Karl Hermann (1883–1939), a salesman, in 1910. The couple had a son, Felix (1911–1940), and two daughters, Gertrude (Gerti) Kaufmann (1912–1972), and Hanna Seidner (1920–1941).[95][96] After her marriage to Hermann, she became closer to her brother, whose letters showed an active interest in the upbringing and education of her children. He accompanied her on a 1915 trip to Hungary to visit Hermann, who was stationed there, and spent a summer with her and her children in Müritz the year before he died.[95][97]

With the outbreak of the Great Depression in 1929, the Hermann family business experienced financial difficulties and eventually went bankrupt.[95] Karl Hermann died 27 February 1939, and Elli was supported financially by her sisters.[95][97] On 21 October 1941, she was deported together with her daughter Hanna to the Łódź Ghetto, where she lived temporarily with her sister Valli and Valli's husband in the spring of 1942. She was probably killed in the Kulmhof extermination camp in the fall of 1942.[95][98][99][97][100] Of Elli's three children, only her daughter Gerti survived the Second World War. A memorial plaque commemorates the three sisters at the family grave in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague.[97]

### Personality

Kafka as a Doctor of Law, around 1906

Kafka had a lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive. However, those who met him found him to possess a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence and a dry sense of humour; they also found him boyishly handsome, although of austere appearance.[101][102][103] Kafka was thought to be "very self-analytic".[104] Brod compared Kafka to Heinrich von Kleist, noting that both writers had the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details.[105] Brod thought Kafka was one of the most entertaining people he had met; Kafka enjoyed sharing his humour with his friends but also helped them in difficult situations with good advice.[106] According to Brod, he was a passionate reciter, able to phrase his speech as though it were music.[107] Brod felt that two of Kafka's most distinguishing traits were "absolute truthfulness" (absolute Wahrhaftigkeit) and "precise conscientiousness" (präzise Gewissenhaftigkeit).[108][109] He explored inconspicuous details in depth and with such precision and love that unforeseen things surfaced that seemed strange but absolutely true (nichts als wahr).[110]

Kafka's letters and unexpurgated diaries reveal homoerotic themes, including a scenario with novelist Franz Werfel and references to the work of Hans Blüher on male bonding. Saul Friedländer argues that this mental struggle may have informed the themes of alienation and psychological brutality in his writing.[111]

Although Kafka showed little interest in exercise as a child, he later developed a passion for games and physical activity[43] and was an accomplished rider, swimmer, and rower.[108] On weekends, he and his friends embarked on long hikes, often planned by Kafka himself.[112] His other interests included alternative medicine, modern education systems such as Montessori,[108] and technological novelties such as airplanes and film.[113] Writing was vitally important to Kafka; he considered it a "form of prayer".[114] He was highly sensitive to noise and preferred absolute quiet when writing.[115] Kafka was also a vegetarian and did not drink alcohol.[116]

Pérez-Álvarez has claimed that Kafka had symptomatology consistent with schizoid personality disorder.[117] His style, it is claimed, not only in Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) but in other writings, appears to show low- to medium-level schizoid traits, which Pérez-Álvarez claims influenced much of Kafka's work.[118] His anguish can be seen in this diary entry from 21 June 1913:[119]

Template:Text and translation

and in Zürau Aphorism number 50:

Template:Text and translation

The Italian medical researchers Alessia Coralli and Antonio Perciaccante have posited in a 2016 article that Kafka may have had borderline personality disorder with co-occurring psychophysiological insomnia.[120] Joan Lachkar interpreted Die Verwandlung as "a vivid depiction of the borderline personality" and described the story as "model for Kafka's own abandonment fears, anxiety, depression, and parasitic dependency needs. Kafka illuminated the borderline's general confusion of normal and healthy desires, wishes, and needs with something ugly and disdainful".[121]

Though Kafka never married, he held marriage and children in high esteem. He had several girlfriends and lovers during his life.[122] He may have suffered from an eating disorder. Doctor Manfred M. Fichter of the Psychiatric Clinic, University of Munich, presented "evidence for the hypothesis that the writer Franz Kafka had suffered from an atypical anorexia nervosa",[123] and that Kafka was not just lonely and depressed but also "occasionally suicidal".[102] In his 1995 book Franz Kafka, the Jewish Patient, Sander Gilman investigated contemporaneous views about "why a Jew might have been considered 'hypochondriacal' or 'homosexual' and how Kafka incorporates aspects of these ways of understanding the Jewish male into his own self-image and writing".[124] Kafka considered suicide at least once, in late 1912.[125]

### Political views

Before World War I,[126] Kafka attended several meetings of the Klub mladých, a Czech anarchist, anti-militarist, and anti-clerical organization.[127] Hugo Bergmann, who attended the same elementary and high schools as Kafka, fell out with Kafka during their last academic year (1900–1901) because "[Kafka's] socialism and my Zionism were much too strident".[128][129] Bergmann said: "Franz became a socialist, I became a Zionist in 1898. The synthesis of Zionism and socialism did not yet exist."[129] Bergmann claims that Kafka wore a red carnation to school to show his support for socialism.[129] In one diary entry, Kafka made reference to the influential anarchist philosopher Peter Kropotkin: "Don't forget Kropotkin!"[130]

During the Communist era, the legacy of Kafka's work for Eastern Bloc socialism was hotly debated. Opinions ranged from the notion that he satirised the bureaucratic bungling of a crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire to the belief that he embodied the rise of socialism.[131] A further key point was Marx's theory of alienation. While the orthodox position was that Kafka's depictions of alienation were no longer relevant for a society that had supposedly eliminated alienation, a 1963 conference held in Liblice, Czechoslovakia, on the eightieth anniversary of his birth, reassessed the importance of Kafka's portrayal of bureaucracy.[132] Whether Kafka was a political writer is still an issue of debate.[133]

### Judaism and Zionism

Kafka in 1910 Kafka's notebook with his studies of Hebrew

Kafka grew up in Prague as a German-speaking Jew.[134] He was deeply fascinated by the Jews of Eastern Europe, who he thought possessed an intensity of spiritual life that was absent from Jews in the West. His diary contains many references to Yiddish writers.[135] Yet he was at times alienated from Judaism and Jewish life. On 8 January 1914, he wrote in his diary: Template:Text and translation

As a teenager, Kafka declared himself an atheist.[136] Issues such as Judaism, the Talmud, the Zohar, and the Kabbalah remain a theme in his diaries.[137] He notes in his diary, shortly before embarking on his composition of The Castle, that in the demonic onslaught of visions assaulting him he perceives "the intimations of a secret doctrine, a new Kabbalah" whose development has been barred by Zionism.[138]

In the final issue of Die Sammlung, a journal for exiles from the Third Reich in Western Europe, Klaus Mann writes, "[T]he collected works of Kafka, offered by the Schocken Verlag in Berlin, are the noblest and most significant publications that have come out of Germany. [Kafka contributes] the epoch's purest and most singular works of literature… [T]his spiritual event has occurred within a splendid isolation, in a ghetto far from the German cultural ministry."[139]

In 1935, as the Nazi Race Laws were being promulgated and prepared for their introduction at that year's Nuremberg Rally, the word ghetto bore the same connotation it carried since the early 17th century: 'a part of the city where Jews were compelled to live'.[140] Mann's mention of the ghetto here is an allusion to Kafka's status as a Jewish writer, and a swipe at Hitler's antisemitic policies. Very likely as a result of this message, the German cultural ministry sent a cease-and-desist letter to Schocken, reminding the publisher that Kafka's name had been placed on the Third Reich's index librorum prohibitorum several weeks earlier.[141]

That same year, a Rabbi of the Bar Kochba Youth Movement in Prague, Martin Buber,[142] wrote to Brod (the editor of Kafka's Werke) hat these stories were "a great possession, that could show how one can live marginally with complete integrity and without loss of background".[143] First published in Buber's Der Jude in 1917, Kafka's story "Jackals and Arabs" is an illustration of the tendency that Buber describes in this letter: Arabs are called Arabs, elsewhere Chinese may be directly referred to as people from China,[144] but in this case references to Jews are zoomorphic, as elsewhere,[145] and in other places Jewish characters are simply not named as such.[146]

Benjamin remarks that Kafka's world is pre-animistic (as opposed to the dualism of later religions)—implying a universal and primordial ur-phenomenology (prior to the distinction of the spiritual and the substantial in human perception) that emerges as a hallmark of Kafka's style.[147] But in the same essay, Benjamin includes a parable of an obviously Chasidic character to describe Kafka's work, and in his correspondence attached to this essay he refers to Kafka's stories as a haggadic (referring to stories in the Talmud) uprising against halakha (referring to legal doctrine).[148][141] Arendt echoes and expands on Benjamin's larger sentiment (which at that time was still a novelty in Kafka criticism), repeating the injunction that it is a mistake to refer to Kafka as a particularly Jewish or religious figure. Arendt's article, which appeared in the Partisan Review in 1944, was a sequel to Benjamin's earlier piece in many respects.[149][150] Arendt was a close confidant of Benjamin's and worked as an editor-at-large in Paris for Schocken Books in the late 1930s, when it published the final volumes of Kafka's works.[141] Arendt was also employed by various Zionist associations devoted to facilitating the emigration of Jewish children to Palestine so that they could escape the Third Reich.[151] Arendt and Benjamin both emphasized that Kafka belongs to the whole world.[150]

Hawes suggests that, though Kafka was conscious of his own Jewishness, in his fiction he concealed that of his Jewish characters.[152][153][154] In the opinion of literary critic Harold Bloom, although Kafka was uneasy with his Jewish heritage, he was the quintessential Jewish writer.[155] Lothar Kahn is likewise unequivocal: "The presence of Jewishness in Kafka's oeuvre is no longer subject to doubt".[156] Pavel Eisner, one of Kafka's first translators, interprets Der Process (The Trial) as the embodiment of the "triple dimension of Jewish existence in Prague… his protagonist Josef K. is (symbolically) arrested by a German (Rabensteiner), a Czech (Kullich), and a Jew (Kaminer). He stands for the 'guiltless guilt' that imbues the Jew in the modern world, although there is no evidence that he himself is a Jew".[157]

In his essay Sadness in Palestine?!, Dan Miron explores Kafka's connection to Zionism: "It seems that those who claim that there was such a connection and that Zionism played a central role in his life and literary work, and those who deny the connection altogether or dismiss its importance, are both wrong. The truth lies in some very elusive place between these two simplistic poles."[135] Kafka considered moving to Palestine with Felice Bauer, and later with Dora Diamant. He studied Hebrew while living in Berlin, hiring a friend of Brod's from Palestine, Pua Bat-Tovim, to tutor him[135] and attending Rabbi Julius Grünthal[158] and Rabbi Julius Guttmann's classes in the Berlin Hochschule für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (College for the Study of Judaism),[159] where he also studied the Talmud.[160]

Livia Rothkirchen calls Kafka the "symbolic figure of his era".[157] His contemporaries included numerous Jewish, Czech, and German writers who were sensitive to Jewish, Czech, and German culture. According to Rothkirchen, "This situation lent their writings a broad cosmopolitan outlook and a quality of exaltation bordering on transcendental metaphysical contemplation. An illustrious example is Franz Kafka".[157] Towards the end of his life, Kafka sent a postcard to his friend Hugo Bergmann in Tel Aviv, announcing his intention to emigrate to Palestine. Bergmann refused to host Kafka because he had young children and was afraid that Kafka would infect them with tuberculosis.[161]

## Death

Franz Kafka's grave in Prague-Žižkov designed by Leopold Ehrmann

Kafka's laryngeal tuberculosis worsened and in March 1924 he returned from Berlin to Prague,[78] where members of his family, principally his sister Ottla, as well as Dora Diamant, took care of him. He went to Hugo Hoffmann's sanatorium in Kierling just outside Vienna for treatment on 10 April,[92] and died there on 3 June 1924. The cause of death seemed to be starvation: the condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for him, and since parenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way to feed him.[162][163]

Kafka was editing "A Hunger Artist" on his deathbed, a story whose composition he had begun before his throat closed to the point that he could not take any nourishment.[164] His body was brought back to Prague where he was buried on 11 June 1924, in the New Jewish Cemetery in Prague-Žižkov.[73] His obituary appeared in the Prager Presse and the Berliner Tageblatt.[165] Kafka was virtually unknown during his own lifetime, but he did not consider fame important. He rose to fame rapidly after his death,[114] particularly after World War II. The Kafka tombstone was designed by architect Leopold Ehrmann.[166]

## Works

First page of Kafka's Letter to His Father

All of Kafka's published works were written in German. What little was published during his lifetime attracted scant public attention.[167] Kafka finished none of his full-length novels and burned around 90 percent of his work,[168][169] much of it during the period he lived in Berlin with Diamant, who helped him burn the drafts.[170] In his early years as a writer he was influenced by von Kleist, whose work he described in a letter to Bauer as frightening and whom he considered closer than his own family.[171] The first mention of Kafka's work was in an article by Max Brod on 9 February 1907 in the Berlin weekly Die Gegenwart, two years prior to his first publication. Brod would write about his friend again in 1921 in an essay entitled "Der Dichter Frank Kafka".[165]

### Stories

Kafka's earliest published works were eight stories that appeared in 1908 in the first issue of the literary journal Hyperion under the title Betrachtung (Contemplation). He wrote the story "Beschreibung eines Kampfes" ("Description of a Struggle")[lower-alpha 5] in 1904; in 1905 he showed it to Brod, who advised him to continue writing and convinced him to submit it to Hyperion. Kafka published a fragment in 1908[172] and two sections in the spring of 1909, all in Munich.[173]

In a creative outburst on the night of 22 September 1912, Kafka wrote the story "Das Urteil" ("The Judgment", literally "The Verdict") and dedicated it to Felice Bauer. Brod noted the similarity in names of the main character and his fictional fiancée, Georg Bendemann and Frieda Brandenfeld, to Franz Kafka and Felice Bauer.[174] The story is often considered Kafka's breakthrough work. It deals with the troubled relationship of a son and his dominant father, facing a new situation after the son's engagement.[175][176] Kafka later described writing it as "a complete opening of body and soul",[177] a story that "evolved as a true birth, covered with filth and slime".[178] The story was first published in Leipzig in 1912 and dedicated "to Miss Felice Bauer", and in subsequent editions "for F."[92]

In 1912, Kafka wrote Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, or The Transformation),[179] published in 1915 in Leipzig. The story begins with a travelling salesman waking to find himself transformed into an ungeheures Ungeziefer, a monstrous vermin, Ungeziefer being a general term for unwanted and unclean pests, especially insects. Critics regard the work as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century.[180][181][182] The story "In der Strafkolonie" ("In the Penal Colony"), dealing with an elaborate torture and execution device, was written in October 1914,[92] revised in 1918, and published in Leipzig during October 1919. The story "Ein Hungerkünstler" ("A Hunger Artist"), published in the periodical Die neue Rundschau in 1924, describes a victimized protagonist who experiences a decline in the appreciation of his strange craft of starving himself for extended periods.[183] His last story, "Josefine, die Sängerin oder Das Volk der Mäuse" ("Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk"), also deals with the relationship between an artist and his audience.[184]

### Novels

Kafka began his first novel in 1912;[185] its first chapter is the story "Der Heizer" ("The Stoker"). He called the work, which remained unfinished, Der Verschollene (The Man Who Disappeared or The Missing Person), but when Brod published it after Kafka's death he named it Amerika.[186] The inspiration for the novel was the time Kafka spent in the audience of Yiddish theatre the previous year, bringing him to a new awareness of his heritage, which led to the thought that an innate appreciation for one's heritage lives deep within each person.[187] More explicitly humorous and slightly more realistic than most of Kafka's works, the novel shares the motif of an oppressive and intangible system putting the protagonist repeatedly in bizarre situations.[188] It uses many details of experiences from his relatives who had emigrated to America[189] and is the only work for which Kafka considered an optimistic ending.[190]

In 1914 Kafka began the novel Der Process (The Trial),[173] the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. He did not complete the novel, although he finished the final chapter. According to Nobel Prize-winning author Elias Canetti, Felice is central to the plot of Der Process and Kafka said it was "her story".[191][192] Canetti titled his book on Kafka's letters to Felice Kafka's Other Trial, in recognition of the relationship between the letters and the novel.[192] Michiko Kakutani notes in a review for The New York Times that Kafka's letters have the "earmarks of his fiction: the same nervous attention to minute particulars; the same paranoid awareness of shifting balances of power; the same atmosphere of emotional suffocation—combined, surprisingly enough, with moments of boyish ardour and delight."[192]

According to his diary, Kafka was already planning his novel Das Schloss (The Castle), by 11 June 1914, but he did not begin writing it until 27 January 1922.[173] The protagonist is the Landvermesser (land surveyor) named K., who struggles for unknown reasons to gain access to the mysterious authorities of a castle who govern the village. Kafka intended to have the castle's authorities notify K. on his deathbed that his "legal claim to live in the village was not valid, yet, taking certain auxiliary circumstances into account, he was to be permitted to live and work there".[193] Dark and at times surreal, the novel is focused on alienation, bureaucracy, the seemingly endless frustrations of man's attempts to stand against the system, and the futile and hopeless pursuit of an unattainable goal. Hartmut M. Rastalsky noted in his thesis, "Like dreams, his texts combine precise 'realistic' detail with absurdity, careful observation and reasoning on the part of the protagonists with inexplicable obliviousness and carelessness."[194]

### Drawings

Der Denker, by Franz Kafka

Kafka drew and sketched extensively. His interest in art grew from 1901 to 1906. He "practiced drawing, took drawing classes, attended art history lectures, and sought to establish a connection to Prague's artistic circles".[195] According to Max Brod, Kafka "was even more indifferent, or perhaps better, more hostile to his drawings than he was to his literary production".[195] As he did with his writings, Kafka asked in his testament for his drawings to be destroyed.[196] Brod preserved all of Kafka's drawings that Kafka gave him or that he could rescue from the wastebasket or otherwise, but "[a]nything that I didn't rescue was destroyed".[195] Until May 2021, only about 40 of his drawings were known.[197][198] In 2022, Yale University Press published Franz Kafka: The Drawings.[199] The book brought to light about 150 sketches by Kafka.[200]

### Publishing history

First edition of Betrachtung, 1912

Kafka's stories were initially published in literary periodicals. His first eight were printed in 1908 in the first issue of the bi-monthly Hyperion.[201] Franz Blei published two dialogues in 1909 which became part of "Beschreibung eines Kampfes" ("Description of a Struggle").[201] A fragment of the story "Die Aeroplane in Brescia" ("The Aeroplanes at Brescia"), written on a trip to Italy with Brod, appeared in the daily Bohemia on 28 September 1909.[201][202] On 27 March 1910, several stories that later became part of the book Betrachtung (Contemplation or Meditation) were published in the Easter edition of Bohemia.[201][203] In Leipzig during 1913, Brod and publisher Kurt Wolff included "Das Urteil. Eine Geschichte von Franz Kafka." ("The Judgment. A Story by Franz Kafka.") in their literary yearbook for the art poetry Arkadia. In the same year, Wolff published "Der Heizer" ("The Stoker") in the Jüngste Tag series, where it enjoyed three printings.[204] The story "Vor dem Gesetz" ("Before the Law") was published in the 1915 New Year's edition of the independent Jewish weekly Selbstwehr; it was reprinted in 1919 as part of the story collection Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor) and became part of the novel Der Process. Other stories were published in various publications, including Martin Buber's Der Jude, the paper Prager Tagblatt, and the periodicals Die neue Rundschau, Genius, and Prager Presse.[201]

Kafka's first published book, Betrachtung (Contemplation or Meditation), was a collection of 18 stories written between 1904 and 1912. On a summer trip to Weimar, Brod initiated a meeting between Kafka and Kurt Wolff;[205] Wolff published Betrachtung in the Rowohlt Verlag at the end of 1912 (with the year given as 1913).[206] Kafka dedicated it to Brod, "Für M.B.", and added in the personal copy given to his friend "So wie es hier schon gedruckt ist, für meinen liebsten Max‍--‌Franz K." ("As it is already printed here, for my dearest Max").[207]

Kafka's novella Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) was first printed in the October 1915 issue of Die Weißen Blätter, a monthly edition of expressionist literature, edited by René Schickele.[206] Another story collection, Ein Landarzt (A Country Doctor), was published by Kurt Wolff in 1919,[206] dedicated to Kafka's father.[208] Kafka prepared a final collection of four stories for print, Ein Hungerkünstler (A Hunger Artist), which appeared in 1924 after his death, in Verlag Die Schmiede. On 20 April 1924, the Berliner Börsen-Courier published Kafka's essay on Adalbert Stifter.[209]

#### Max Brod

First edition of Der Process, 1925

At the time of his death, Kafka's works were probably known only to a small circle of Czech and German writers.[210] Kafka left his work, both published and unpublished, to his friend and literary executor Max Brod with explicit instructions that it should be destroyed on Kafka's death; Kafka wrote: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread."[211][212] Brod ignored this request and published the novels and collected works between 1925 and 1935. Brod defended his action by claiming that he had told Kafka, "I shall not carry out your wishes", and that "Franz should have appointed another executor if he had been absolutely determined that his instructions should stand".[213]

Brod took many of Kafka's papers, which remain unpublished, with him in suitcases to Palestine when he fled there in 1939.[214] Kafka's last lover, Dora Diamant (later, Dymant-Lask), also ignored his wishes, secretly keeping 20 notebooks and 35 letters. These were confiscated by the Gestapo in 1933, but scholars continue to search for them.[215]

As Brod published the bulk of the writings in his possession,[216] Kafka's work began to attract wider attention and critical acclaim. Brod found it difficult to arrange Kafka's notebooks in chronological order. One problem was that Kafka often began writing in different parts of the book; sometimes in the middle, sometimes working backwards from the end.[217][218] Brod finished many of Kafka's incomplete works for publication. For example, Kafka left Der Process with unnumbered and incomplete chapters and Das Schloss with incomplete sentences and ambiguous content;[218] Brod rearranged chapters, copy-edited the text, and changed the punctuation. Der Process appeared in 1925 in Verlag Die Schmiede. Kurt Wolff published two other novels, Das Schloss in 1926 and Amerika in 1927. In 1931, Brod edited a collection of prose and unpublished stories as The Great Wall of China, including the titular short story "The Great Wall of China". The book appeared in the Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag. Brod's sets are usually called the "Definitive Editions".[219]

#### Modern editions

In 1961 Malcolm Pasley acquired for the Oxford Bodleian Library most of Kafka's original handwritten works.[220][221] The text for Der Process was later purchased through auction and is stored at the German Literary Archives in Marbach am Neckar, Germany.[221][222] Subsequently, Pasley headed a team (including Gerhard Neumann, Jost Schillemeit and Jürgen Born) which reconstructed the German novels; S. Fischer Verlag republished them.[223] Pasley was the editor for Das Schloss, published in 1982, and Der Process (The Trial), published in 1990. Jost Schillemeit was the editor of Der Verschollene (Amerika) published in 1983. These are called the "Critical Editions" or the "Fischer Editions".[224]

In 2023, the first unexpurgated edition of Kafka's diaries was published in English,[225] "more than three decades after this complete text appeared in German. The sole previous English edition, with Brod's edits, was issued in the late 1940s".[226] The new edition revealed that Brod had expunged homoerotic references, and negative comments about Eastern European Jews.[227]

#### Unpublished papers

When Brod died in 1968, he left Kafka's unpublished papers, which are believed to number in the thousands, to his secretary Esther Hoffe.[228] She released or sold some, but left most to her daughters, Eva and Ruth, who also refused to release the papers. A court battle began in 2008 between the sisters and the National Library of Israel, which claimed these works became the property of the nation of Israel when Brod emigrated to British Palestine in 1939. Esther Hoffe sold the original manuscript of Der Process for US$2 million in 1988 to the German Literary Archive Museum of Modern Literature in Marbach am Neckar.[229][230] A ruling by a Tel Aviv family court in 2010 held that the papers must be released and a few were, including a previously unknown story, but the legal battle continued.[231] The Hoffes claim the papers are their personal property, while the National Library of Israel argues they are "cultural assets belonging to the Jewish people".[231] The National Library also suggests that Brod bequeathed the papers to them in his will.[232] The Tel Aviv Family Court ruled in October 2012, six months after Ruth's death, that the papers were the property of the National Library. The Israeli Supreme Court upheld the decision in December 2016.[233]

## Critical response

### After-death biographies and critiques

After his death, Rudolf Kayser wrote an article titled "Anmerkungen zu Franz Kafka" for the Neue Rundschau, and Manfred Sturmann wrote a biographical essay titled "Erinnerungen an Kafka" for the Allgemeine Zeitung.[165] In 1935, Brod wrote a biography. "Since this work was written in German, however, it was not available to the majority of English critics".[234]

From 1924 to 1927, Brod arranged for the publication of Kafka's three unfinished novels and otherwise promoted Kafka's works. During this period, many analytical essays were written about his work. In the late 1920s, 55 articles were written about Kafka's work, most of them reviews and references. Examples include Heinrich Jacob's "Kafka oder die Wahrhaftigkeit" for Der Feuerreiter in 1924 and Brod's "Infantilismus Kleist und Kafka" in 1927.[235]

Kafka's work was translated to English in the 1930s, and American journals and magazines such as The New Yorker, The Nation and Athenaeum, The Nation, Scribners, New York Tribune, and The Bookman, wrote reviews about his books. The Castle was specially very well reviewed. But afterwards, until 1937, only three articles were written.[236]

At the same time, in Germany, in 1930 only four articles were written, and the following year saw eight articles. But in 1932, only one article was published, possibly because of the rise of the National Socialist party, as there was a strong antisemitic bias at a time. In Nazi Germany, between 1933 and 1937, only 11 articles about Kafka were published, mostly by Jews in periodical such as Der Morgen, Frankfurter Zeitung, Jüdische Rundschau, and Hochland. From 1937 to 1939, no articles were written.[237]

Kafka's writings began to receive the highest possible critical acclaim when they were re-released amidst the imposition of the Nuremberg Racial Hygiene Laws in 1935 as a complete set by Schocken, however distribution and broad awareness of these works was stymied by the totalitarian atmosphere of the Nazi regime.[238] The final volumes of this set were released after Schocken was forced to relocate to Prague.[238] The works became more famous in German-speaking countries after World War II, influencing German literature, and its influence spread elsewhere in the world in the 1960s. A critical edition of his complete works, including many elements that had been edited out by Brod in the earlier Schocken collection, was released by S. Fischer Verlag in the final decades of the 20th century.

In 1937, The Trial was translated to English. There were 12 reviews in the United States, but the book was reviewed 20 times in other languages, including in France and Brazil. The reviews were mixed, with The New York Times reviewer stating that "it is beyond me" and other reviewers stating that Kafka was "one of the most extraordinary writers of our time".[239]

In the following year, Amerika was translated to English and generally well received by four English and two American reviewers. In the same year, Das Schloss was translated into French and received five reviews.[234]

In 1939, Kafka's work was reviewed in many countries, including in the periodicals The Southern Review, The Kenyon Review and Expressionism in German Life. In 1940, The Southern Review published a religious interpretation of The Trial. In 1941, eleven reviews and articles were published, including "a doctor's dissertation at the University of Zürich" by Herbert Tauber, entitled "Franz Kafka, eine Deutung seiner Werke". Other countries whose writers showed interest in Kafka's work were Peru, Cuba, and Brazil.[240]

In the first years of World War II, interest in Kafka's work diminished in the United States, with only two articles published. In 1943, four articles were published, with one that "criticized Kafka as a symbol of the social decadence which was responsible for the failure of the Weimar Republic". But in the following year, interest in his work increased again, with six articles published. As World War II drew to a close, interest in Kafka grew once again, with 16 articles appearing in various countries' periodicals, including Focus One, Quarterly Review of Literature, and Les Cahiers du Sud, as well as in the book Freudism and the Literary Mind. Many intellectuals grew interested on Kafka's work, with articles by Parker Tyler in Accent, Albert Camus in Hope and Absurdity, and Jean Wahl in Kierkegaard and Kafka tying his work to existentialism. In 1946, Kafka's work was popular, with 21 articles on it written that year.[239]

### Critical interpretations

The British-American poet W. H. Auden called Kafka "the Dante of the twentieth century";[241] the novelist Vladimir Nabokov placed him among the greatest writers of the 20th century.[242] Gabriel García Márquez noted the reading of Kafka's The Metamorphosis showed him "that it was possible to write in a different way".[243][244] A prominent theme of Kafka's work, first established in the short story "The Judgment",[245] is father–son conflict: the guilt induced in the son is resolved through suffering and atonement.[24][245] Other prominent themes and archetypes include alienation, physical and psychological brutality, characters on a terrifying quest, and mystical transformation.[246]

Kafka's style has been compared to that of Kleist as early as 1916, in a review of "Die Verwandlung" and "Der Heizer" by Oscar Walzel in Berliner Beiträge.[247] The nature of Kafka's prose allows for varied interpretations and critics have placed his writing into a variety of literary schools.[133] Marxists, for example, have sharply disagreed over how to interpret Kafka's works.[127][133] Some accused him of distorting reality whereas others claimed he was critiquing capitalism.[133] The hopelessness and absurdity common to his works are seen as emblematic of existentialism.[248] Some of Kafka's books are influenced by the expressionist movement, though the majority of his literary output was associated with the experimental modernist genre. Kafka also touches on the theme of human conflict with bureaucracy. William Burrows claims that such work is centred on the concepts of struggle, pain, solitude, and the need for relationships.[249] Others, such as Thomas Mann, see Kafka's work as allegorical: a quest, metaphysical in nature, for God.[250][251]

According to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, the themes of alienation and persecution, although present in Kafka's work, have been overemphasised by critics. They argue that Kafka's work is more deliberate and subversive—and more joyful—than it may first appear. They point out that focusing on the futility of Kafka's characters' struggles reveals Kafka's humour; he is not necessarily commenting on his own problems but rather is pointing out how people tend to invent problems. In his work, Kafka often creates malevolent, absurd worlds.[252][253] Kafka translator Mark Harman writes, "When Kafka read his own work aloud to his friends he evidently brought covert humor to the surface even when his writing was at its bleakest." Max Brod, Harman adds, recollected that Kafka's friends "laughed quite immoderately" even when he read the first chapter of The Trial, despite its "fearful earnestness", and there were moments when Kafka himself laughed so much that "he couldn't read any further".[254] The novelist Milan Kundera suggests that Kafka's surreal humour may have been an inversion of Dostoevsky's presentation of characters who are punished for a crime. In Kafka's The Trial, a character is punished even though he has committed no crime. Kundera believes that Kafka's inspirations for his characteristic situations came both from growing up in a patriarchal family and from living in a totalitarian state.[255]

His writings have been seen as prophetic or premonitory of a totalitarian future.[256][257][258][259][260][261][262] Attempts have been made to identify the influence of Kafka's legal background and the role of law in his fiction.[263][264] Many interpretations identify the importance of the law in his work,[265] in which the legal system is often oppressive.[266] The law in Kafka's works, rather than representing any particular legal or political entity, is usually interpreted to represent a collection of anonymous, incomprehensible forces. These are hidden from the individual but control the lives of the people, who are innocent victims of systems beyond their control.[265] Critics who support this absurdist interpretation cite instances where Kafka describes himself in conflict with an absurd universe, such as the following entry from his diary:

> Enclosed in my own four walls, I found myself as an immigrant imprisoned in a foreign country;... I saw my family as strange aliens whose foreign customs, rites, and very language defied comprehension;... though I did not want it, they forced me to participate in their bizarre rituals;... I could not resist.[267]

However, James Hawes argues that many of Kafka's descriptions of the legal proceedings in The Trial—metaphysical, absurd, bewildering and nightmarish as they might appear—are based on accurate and informed descriptions of German and Austrian criminal proceedings of the time, which were inquisitorial rather than adversarial.[268] Although he worked in insurance, as a trained lawyer Kafka was "keenly aware of the legal debates of his day".[264][269] In a 2009 publication that uses Kafka's office writings as its point of departure,[270] Pothik Ghosh states that with Kafka, law "has no meaning outside its fact of being a pure force of domination and determination".[271]

Kafka's work often refers to animals — "zoopoetics," in Jacques Derrida's term. Joachim Seyppel has noted that his stories contain "countless references to animals, human-animal comparisons, allusions to animal life, fables, and animal motifs; there are important works in which the human person has been transformed into an animal, or vice versa. There are hardly any stories in which Kafka did not include at least one significant reference to creatures of the animal kingdom".[272][273] "Already in his earliest surviving correspondence, he uses animal figures to convey psychological insights, his favorite being the mole."[274] In Kafka's work animals sometimes "occupy leading roles, as narrators and central characters", but there is a "comparative absence of named species in Kafka's fiction".[275] Themes of his stories range from animal cruelty to entomophobia to animal training. Animals are often shown as "others" that suffer from human "animalesque" actions, with Kafka's ideas thus converging with ecocentrist and postcolonialist thoughts.[276]

### Translations

The first instance of Kafka being translated into English was in 1925, when William A. Drake published "A Report for an Academy" in the New York Herald Tribune.[277] Eugene Jolas translated Kafka's "The Judgment" for the modernist journal transition in 1928.[278] In 1930, Edwin and Willa Muir translated the first German edition of Das Schloss. This was published as The Castle by Secker & Warburg in England and Alfred A. Knopf in the United States.[279] In the 1930s, Alberto Spaini translated The Process to Italian and Alexandre Vialatte translated it to French.[234] A 1941 edition, including a homage by Thomas Mann, spurred a surge in Kafka's popularity in the United States during the late 1940s.[280] The Muirs translated all shorter works that Kafka had seen fit to print, including The Metamorphosis in 1933; they were published by Schocken Books in 1948 as The Penal Colony: Stories and Short Pieces,[281] including additionally The First Long Train Journey, written by Kafka and Brod; Kafka's "A Novel about Youth", a review of Felix Sternheim's Die Geschichte des jungen Oswald; his essay on Kleist's "Anecdotes"; his review of the literary magazine Hyperion; and an epilogue by Brod.

Later editions, notably those of 1954 (Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings), included text, translated by Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser,[282] that had been deleted by earlier publishers.[223] Known as "Definitive Editions", they include translations of The Trial, Definitive, The Castle, Definitive, and other writings. These translations are generally accepted to have a number of biases and are considered to be dated in interpretation.[283] Published in 1961 by Schocken Books, Parables and Paradoxes presented in a bilingual edition by Nahum N. Glatzer selected writings,[284] drawn from notebooks, diaries, letters, short fictional works and the novel Der Process.

New translations were completed and published based on the recompiled German text of Pasley and Schillemeit‍--‌The Castle, Critical by Mark Harman (Schocken Books, 1998),[221] The Trial, Critical by Breon Mitchell (Schocken Books, 1998),[285] and The Man Who Disappeared (Amerika) by Michael Hofmann (Penguin Books, 1996)[286] and Amerika: The Missing Person by Mark Harman (Schocken Books, 2008).

#### Translation problems to English

{{further|The Metamorphosis#Translations of the opening

Kafka often made extensive use of a characteristic particular to German, which permits long sentences that sometimes can span an entire page. Kafka's sentences sometimes deliver an unexpected impact just before the full stop, finalizing the meaning and focus of the sentence. This is due to the construction of subordinate clauses in German, which require that the verb be at the end of the sentence. Such constructions are difficult to duplicate in English, so it is up to the translator to provide the reader with the same (or an at least equivalent) effect as the original text.[287] German's more flexible word order and syntactical differences provide for multiple ways in which the same German writing can be translated into English.[288] An example is the first sentence of Kafka's The Metamorphosis, which is crucial to the setting and understanding of the entire story:[289]

Als Gregor Samsa eines Morgens aus unruhigen Träumen erwachte, fand er sich in seinem Bett zu einem ungeheuren Ungeziefer verwandelt.

As Gregor Samsa one morning from restless dreams awoke, found he himself in his bed into a monstrous vermin transformed.

|

—original  | —literal word-for-word translation[290]

The sentence above also exemplifies an instance of another difficult problem facing translators: dealing with the author's intentional use of ambiguous idioms and words that have several meanings, which results in phrasing that is difficult to translate precisely.[291][292] English translators often render the word Ungeziefer as 'insect'; in Middle German, however, Ungeziefer literally means 'an animal unclean for sacrifice';[293] in today's German, it means 'vermin'. It is sometimes used colloquially to mean 'bug'—a very general term, unlike the scientific 'insect'. Kafka had no intention of labeling Gregor, the protagonist of the story, as any specific thing but instead wanted to convey Gregor's disgust at his transformation.[180][181] Another example of this can be found in the final sentence of "Das Urteil" ("The Judgement"), with Kafka's use of the German noun Verkehr. Literally, Verkehr means 'intercourse' and, as in English, can have either a sexual or a non-sexual meaning. The word is additionally used to mean 'transport' or 'traffic'; therefore the sentence can also be translated as: "At that moment an unending stream of traffic crossed over the bridge."[294] The double meaning of Verkehr is given added weight by Kafka's confession to Brod that when he wrote that final line he was thinking of "a violent ejaculation".[178][295]

## Legacy

### Literary and cultural influence

See also: The Metamorphosis in popular culture

Jaroslav Róna's bronze Statue of Franz Kafka in Prague

Unlike many famous writers, Kafka is rarely quoted by others. Instead, he is noted more for his visions and perspective.[296] Kafka had a strong influence on Gabriel García Márquez,[297] Milan Kundera[298] and the novel The Palace of Dreams by Ismail Kadare.[299] Shimon Sandbank, a professor, literary critic, and writer, also identifies Kafka as having influenced Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, Eugène Ionesco, J. M. Coetzee and Jean-Paul Sartre.[300] A Financial Times literary critic credits Kafka with influencing José Saramago,[301] and Al Silverman, a writer and editor, states that J. D. Salinger loved to read Kafka's works.[302] The Romanian writer Mircea Cărtărescu said "Kafka is the author I love the most and who means, for me, the gate to literature"; he also described Kafka as "the saint of literature".[303]

Kafka has been cited as an influence on the Swedish writer Stig Dagerman,[304][305] and the Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, who paid homage to Kafka in his novel Kafka on the Shore with the namesake protagonist[306] and in his short story, "Samsa in Love", with its opening sentence, "He woke to discover that he had undergone a metamorphosis and become Gregor Samsa".[307]

David Černý's Head of Franz Kafka sculpture in Prague

In 1999 a committee of 99 authors, scholars, and literary critics ranked Der Process and Das Schloss the second and ninth most significant German-language novels of the 20th century.[308] Harold Bloom said "when he is most himself, Kafka gives us a continuous inventiveness and originality that rivals Dante and truly challenges Proust and Joyce as that of the dominant Western author of our century".[309] Sandbank argues that despite Kafka's pervasiveness, his enigmatic style has yet to be emulated.[300] Neil Christian Pages, a professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University who specialises in Kafka's works, says Kafka's influence transcends literature and literary scholarship; it impacts visual arts, music, and popular culture.[310] Harry Steinhauer, a professor of German and Jewish literature, says that Kafka "has made a more powerful impact on literate society than any other writer of the twentieth century".[6] Brod said that the 20th century will one day be known as the "century of Kafka".[6]

Michel-André Bossy writes that Kafka created a rigidly inflexible and sterile bureaucratic universe. Kafka wrote in an aloof manner full of legal and scientific terms. Yet his serious universe also had insightful humour, all highlighting the "irrationality at the roots of a supposedly rational world".[246] His characters are trapped, confused, full of guilt, frustrated, and lacking understanding of their surreal world. Much post-Kafka fiction, especially science fiction, follows the themes and precepts of Kafka's universe. This can be seen in the works of authors such as George Orwell and Ray Bradbury.[246]

The following are examples of works across a range of dramatic, literary, and musical genres that demonstrate the extent of Kafka's cultural influence:

Title  | Year  | Medium  | Remarks  | Ref

|
|
|
|

Ein Landarzt | 1951  | opera  | by Hans Werner Henze, based on Kafka's story, "A Country Doctor"  | [311]
"A Friend of Kafka" | 1962  | short story  | by Nobel Prize winner Isaac Bashevis Singer, about a Yiddish actor called Jacques Kohn who said he knew Franz Kafka; in this story, according to Jacques Kohn, Kafka believed in the Golem, a legendary creature from Jewish folklore  | [312]
The Trial | 1962  | film  | the film's director, Orson Welles, said, "Say what you like, but The Trial is my greatest work, even greater than Citizen Kane"  | [313][314]
Watermelon Man | 1970  | film  | partly inspired by The Metamorphosis, where a white bigot wakes up as a black man  | [315]
Colony  | 1980  | music  | by English rock band Joy Division, inspired by the Kafka story In the Penal Colony | [316][317]
Kafka | 1983  | play  | by Jack Klaff  | [318]
Kafka-Fragmente, Op. 24 | 1985  | music  | by Hungarian composer György Kurtág for soprano and violin, using fragments of Kafka's diary and letters  | [319]
Kafka's Dick | 1986  | play  | by Alan Bennett, in which the ghosts of Kafka, his father Hermann and Brod arrive at the home of an English insurance clerk (and Kafka aficionado) and his wife  | [320]
Better Morphosis | 1991  | short story  | parodic short story by Brian W. Aldiss, where a cockroach wakes up one morning to find out that it has turned into Franz Kafka  | [321]
Kafka | 1991  | film  | stars Jeremy Irons as the eponymous author; written by Lem Dobbs and directed by Steven Soderbergh, the movie mixes his life and fiction providing a semi-biographical presentation of Kafka's life and works; Kafka investigates the disappearance of one of his colleagues, taking Kafka through many of the writer's own works, most notably The Castle and The Trial | [322]
A Letter to Elise | 1992  | music  | by English rock band The Cure, was heavily influenced by Letters to Felice by Kafka  | [323]
Das Schloß | 1992  | opera  | German-language opera by Aribert Reimann who wrote his own libretto based on Kafka's novel and its dramatization by Max Brod, premiered on 2 September 1992 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, staged by Willy Decker and conducted by Michael Boder.  | [324]
Young Indiana Jones | 1993  | television  | by George Lucas in which a fictional Kafka appears in the episode Espionage Escapades as a friend of Indiana Jones.  |
Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life | 1993  | film  | short comedy film made for BBC Scotland, won an Oscar, was written and directed by Peter Capaldi, and starred Richard E. Grant as Kafka  | [325]
Bad Mojo | 1996  | computer game  | loosely based on The Metamorphosis, with characters named Franz and Roger Samms, alluding to Gregor Samsa  | [326]
In the Penal Colony | 2000  | opera  | by Philip Glass, to a libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer  | [327]
Home Movies | 2001  | television  | animated sitcom by Brendon Small and Loren Bouchard, Season 1 episode Director's Cut depicts the child film crew attempting to shoot guitarist Dwayne's script for a rock opera version of The Metamorphosis | [328]
Kafka on the Shore | 2002  | novel  | by Japanese writer Haruki Murakami, on The New York Times 10 Best Books of 2005 list, World Fantasy Award recipient  | [329]
Statue of Franz Kafka | 2003  | sculpture  | an outdoor sculpture on Vězeňská street in the Jewish Quarter of Prague, by artist Jaroslav Róna  | [330]
Kafka's Trial | 2005  | opera  | by Danish composer Poul Ruders, based on the novel and parts of Kafka's life; first performed in 2005, released on CD  | [331]
Kafka's Soup | 2005  | book  | by Mark Crick, is a literary pastiche in the form of a cookbook, with recipes written in the style of a famous author  | [332]
Kafka the Musical | 2011  | radio play  | by BBC Radio 3 produced as part of their Play of the Week programme. Franz Kafka was played by David Tennant  | [333]
Sound Interpretations - Dedication To Franz Kafka | 2012  | music  | HAZE Netlabel released musical compilation Sound Interpretations – Dedication To Franz Kafka. In this release musicians rethink the literary heritage of Kafka  | [334]
Google Doodle  | 2013  | internet culture  | Google had a sepia-toned doodle of a roach in a hat opening a door, honoring Kafka's 130th birthday  | [335]
The Metamorphosis | 2013  | dance  | Royal Ballet production of The Metamorphosis with Edward Watson  | [336]
Café Kafka | 2014  | opera  | by Spanish composer Francisco Coll on a text by Meredith Oakes, built from texts and fragments by Franz Kafka; Commissioned by Aldeburgh Music, Opera North and Royal Opera Covent Garden  | [337]
Head of Franz Kafka | 2014  | sculpture  | an outdoor sculpture in Prague by David Černý  | [338]
Forest Dark | 2017  | novel  | by Nicole Krauss; partly based on the conceit that Kafka staged his death and funeral in Austria; he moved to Palestine (later Israel), where he lived out his life under an assumed name, working as a gardener, dying in 1958  |
VRwandlung | 2018  | virtual reality  | a virtual reality experience of the first part of The Metamorphosis, directed by Mika Johnson  | [339]
Die Herrlichkeit des Lebens (The Glory of Life) | 2024  | film  | biographical film directed by Judith Kaufmann and Georg Maas  |
Lovers of Franz K. | 2025  | novella  | by Burhan Sönmez, translated from Kurdish by Sami Hêzil. About an attempt to murder Max Brod for his "betrayal" of Kafka by not destroying his manuscripts.
Letters to Kafka | 2025  | novel  | novel by Christine Estima, published by House of Anansi Press, that recounts the love story between Kafka and Milena Jesenská  | [340]
Franz | 2025  | film  | biographical film directed by Agnieszka Holland  | [341]
Kafka's Last Trial | 2025  | film  | documentary film directed by Eliran Peled about the legal and philosophical battle over Kafka's unpublished manuscripts  | [342]

### "Kafkaesque"

"Kafkaesque" redirects here. For the Breaking Bad episode, see [[:Kafkaesque (Breaking Bad)|Kafkaesque Template:(-Breaking Bad)]].

The term "Kafkaesque" is used to describe concepts and situations reminiscent of Kafka's work, particularly Der Process (The Trial) and Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis).[343] Examples include instances in which bureaucracies overpower people, often in a surreal, nightmarish milieu that evokes feelings of senselessness, disorientation, and helplessness. Characters in a Kafkaesque setting often lack a clear course of action to escape a labyrinthine situation. Kafkaesque elements often appear in existential works, but the term has transcended the literary realm to apply to real-life occurrences and situations that are incomprehensibly complex, bizarre, or illogical.[6][313][344][345]

Numerous films and television works have been described as Kafkaesque, and the style is particularly prominent in dystopian science fiction. Works in this genre that have been so described include Patrick Bokanowski's film The Angel (1982), Terry Gilliam's film Brazil (1985), and Alex Proyas' science fiction film noir, Dark City (1998). Films from other genres that have been similarly described include Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976), Joseph Losey's Monsieur Klein (1976)[346] and the Coen brothers' Barton Fink (1991).[347] The television series The Prisoner and The Twilight Zone are also frequently described as Kafkaesque.[348][349] According to Kafka scholars, the term has become so ubiquitous that it is often misused.[350] Ben Marcus, as paraphrased in "What It Really Means to be 'Kafkaesque'" by Joe Fassler in The Atlantic, wrote, "Kafka's quintessential qualities are affecting use of language, a setting that straddles fantasy and reality, and a sense of striving even in the face of bleakness—hopelessly and full of hope."[351]

### Commemorations

Plaque marking the birthplace of Franz Kafka in Prague, designed by Karel Hladík and Jan Kaplický, 1966

3412 Kafka is an asteroid from the inner regions of the asteroid belt, approximately 6 kilometers in diameter. It was discovered on 10 January 1983 by American astronomers Randolph Kirk and Donald Rudy at Palomar Observatory in California, United States,[352] and named after Kafka by them.[353]

The Franz Kafka Museum in Prague is dedicated to Kafka and his work. A major component of the museum is an exhibit, The City of K. Franz Kafka and Prague, which was first shown in Barcelona in 1999, moved to the Jewish Museum in New York City, and finally established in Prague in Malá Strana (Lesser Town), along the Moldau, in 2005. The museum aims with this exhibit to immerse the visitor into the world in which Kafka lived and about which he wrote.[354]

The Franz Kafka Prize, established in 2001, is an annual literary award of the Franz Kafka Society and the City of Prague. It recognizes the merits of literature as "humanistic character and contribution to cultural, national, language and religious tolerance, its existential, timeless character, its generally human validity, and its ability to hand over a testimony about our times".[355] The selection committee and recipients come from all over the world, but are limited to living authors who have had at least one work published in Czech.[355] The recipient receives $10,000, a diploma, and a bronze statuette at a presentation in Prague's Old Town Hall, on the Czech State Holiday in late October.[355]

San Diego State University operates the Kafka Project, which began in 1998 as the official international search for Kafka's last writings.[215]

## Notes

1. ↑ Based on Austro-Hungarian nationality law of 1867
2. ↑ UK: /ˈkæfkə/, US: /ˈkɑːf-/;[3] de; cs; in Czech, he was sometimes called František Kafka.
3. ↑ Like his longer fiction, these sketches may be brutal in some aspects, but their dreadfulness is frequently comedic.[7] A close acquaintance of Kafka's remarked that both his audience and the author himself sometimes laughed so much during readings that Kafka could not continue in his delivery, finding it necessary to collect himself before completing his recitation of the work.[8]
4. ↑ Records of the university list June as Kafka's graduation month, as do some secondary sources (Murray), while Brod lists July, possibly confusing the date with that of an exam three years earlier, on 18 July 1903.[51][52][53][54][55][56]
5. ↑ "Kampf" also translates to "fight".

## References

### Citations

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Koelb 2010, p. 12.
2. ↑ Czech Embassy 2012.
3. ↑ "Kafka". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/kafka.
4. ↑ Herz, Julius M. (1978). "Franz Kafka and Austria: National Background and Ethnic Identity". Modern Austrian Literature 11 (3/4): 301–318. https://www.jstor.org/stable/24645937. Retrieved 22 January 2025. "Kafka, after all, was not just a Prague Jew living in Bohemia. He was also, for more than thirty-five years, an Austrian citizen caught in the middle of many cross-currents.... We might wonder whether or to what extent he considered himself an Austrian, for this question must have occurred to him more than once. For the Jews living in the Austro-Hungarian monarchy life was seriously affected by the highly heterogeneous population.". Quotation on p. 301.
5. ↑ Spindler, William (1993). "Magical Realism: A Typology". Forum for Modern Language Studies XXIX (1): 90–93. doi:10.1093/fmls/XXIX.1.75. ISSN 0015-8518.
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 Steinhauer 1983, pp. 390–408.
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Foster-Wallace, David (1998). "Laughing with Kafka". Harper's Magazine 297 (1778): 23–27. https://harpers.org/wp-content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-1998-07-0059612.pdf.
8. ↑ Parvulescu, Anca (2015). "Kafka's Laughter: On Joy and the Kafkaesque". PMLA 130 (5): 1420–1432. doi:10.1632/pmla.2015.130.5.1420. ISSN 0030-8129. https://www.jstor.org/stable/44017159.
9. ↑ "Heroes – Trailblazers of the Jewish People". https://dbs.bh.org.il/luminary/kafka-franz.
10. ↑ "A new translation of Franz Kafka's diaries restores much of his Jewish musings". 12 January 2023. https://www.jta.org/2023/01/12/culture/a-new-translation-of-franz-kafkas-diaries-restores-much-of-his-jewish-musings.
11. ↑ Gray, Jefferson M., review in The Federal Lawyer, October 2009, of Franz Kafka: The Office Writings. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2009.
12. ↑ Gilman 2005, pp. 20–21.
13. ↑ Northey 1997, pp. 8–10.
14. ↑ Kohoutikriz 2011.
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Gilman 2005, p. 21.
16. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 3–5.
17. ↑ Gray 2005, pp. 147–148.
18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 Ozick, Cynthia (1999-01-03). "The Impossibility of Translating Kafka" (in en-US). The New Yorker. ISSN 0028-792X. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1999/01/11/the-impossibility-of-being-kafka. Retrieved 2025-06-20.
19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Hamalian 1974, p. 3.
20. ↑ Kafka, Franz (2009). The Metamorphosis. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks (Enriched Classics). p. ix. ISBN 978-1-4165-9968-5.
21. ↑ Corngold 1972, pp. xii, 11.
22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Kafka-Franz, Father 2012.
23. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 9.
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 Brod 1960, pp. 15–16.
25. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 19–20.
26. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 15, 17, 22–23.
27. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 22.
28. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 390–391, 462–463.
29. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 13.
30. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 26–27.
31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 Hawes 2008, p. 29.
32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 Sayer 1996, pp. 164–210.
33. ↑ Kempf 2005, pp. 159–160.
34. ↑ Corngold 2004, p. xii.
35. ↑ Karl 1991, p. 148.
36. ↑ Diamant 2003, pp. 36–38.
37. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 40–41.
38. ↑ 38.0 38.1 Gray 2005, p. 179.
39. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 43–70.
40. ↑ Spector 2000, p. 17.
41. ↑ Keren 1993, p. 3.
42. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 40.
43. ↑ 43.0 43.1 Brod 1960, p. 14.
44. ↑ Brod 1966, pp. 53–54.
45. ↑ Bridgwater, Patrick (2003). Kafka, Gothic and Fairytale. Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 9–12. ISBN 978-90-420-1194-6.
46. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 362.
47. ↑ Gray 2005, pp. 74, 273.
48. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 51, 122–124.
49. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 80–83.
50. ↑ Kafka, Franz (2024). Selected Stories, translated and edited by Mark Harman. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p. 16.
51. ↑ Murray 2004, p. 62.
52. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 78.
53. ↑ German University Prague – Doctor of Law 1906.
54. ↑ German University Prague – Exam 1906.
55. ↑ German University Prague – Exam 1905.
56. ↑ German University Prague – Exam 1903.
57. ↑ Karl 1991, p. 210.
58. ↑ Glen 2007, pp. 23–66.
59. ↑ Corngold et al. 2009, p. 28.
60. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 26–30.
61. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 81–84.
62. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 23–25.
63. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 25–27.
64. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 34–39.
65. ↑ Koelb 2010, p. 32.
66. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 56–58.
67. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 29, 73–75, 109–110, 206.
68. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 154.
69. ↑ Corngold 2011, pp. 339–343.
70. ↑ Hawes 2008, p. 186.
71. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 44, 207.
72. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 186, 191.
73. ↑ 73.0 73.1 European Graduate School 2012.
74. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 43.
75. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 57–70.
76. ↑ 76.0 76.1 Banville 2011.
77. ↑ Köhler 2012.
78. ↑ 78.0 78.1 78.2 Stach 2005, p. 1.
79. ↑ Seubert 2012.
80. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 196–97.
81. ↑ Wagenbach 2019, pp. 119–20.
82. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 129, 198–199.
83. ↑ Murray 2004, pp. 276–279.
84. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 379–389.
85. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 240–242.
86. ↑ S. Fischer 2012.
87. ↑ Alt 2005, p. 303.
88. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 180–181.
89. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 1, 379–389, 434–436.
90. ↑ Apel 2012, p. 28.
91. ↑ Wagenbach 2019, pp. 154, 159.
92. ↑ 92.0 92.1 92.2 92.3 92.4 Brod 1966, p. 389.
93. ↑ Hempel 2002.
94. ↑ Kafka, Franz (2009). The Metamorphosis. New York: Simon and Schuster Paperbacks. p. ix. ISBN 978-1-4165-9968-5.
95. ↑ 95.0 95.1 95.2 95.3 95.4 95.5 "Elli Kafka". https://www.franzkafka.de/leben/familie/gabrielekafka.
96. ↑ "Sisters – Franz Kafka". https://kafkamuseum.cz/en/franz-kafka/family/sisters/.
97. ↑ 97.0 97.1 97.2 97.3 "Zur Erinnerung an Gabriele Kafka" (in de). https://gabriele-kafka.zurerinnerung.at/.
98. ↑ "Valli Kafka" (in de). https://www.franzkafka.de/leben/familie/valeriekafka.
99. ↑ "Ottla Kafka" (in de). https://www.franzkafka.de/leben/familie/ottiliekafka.
100. ↑ "Kafkas Schwestern" (in de). Jewish Museum Munich. https://www.juedisches-museum-muenchen.de/ausstellungen/kafkas-schwestern.
101. ↑ Janouch 1971, pp. 14, 17.
102. ↑ 102.0 102.1 Fichter 1987, pp. 367–377.
103. ↑ Repertory 2005.
104. ↑ Robertson, Ritchie (2005). Kafka: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. pp. 4.
105. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 41.
106. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 42.
107. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 97.
108. ↑ 108.0 108.1 108.2 Brod 1966, p. 49.
109. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 47.
110. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 52.
111. ↑ Banville 2013.
112. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 90.
113. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 92.
114. ↑ 114.0 114.1 Brod 1960, p. 214.
115. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 156.
116. ↑ Grovier, Kelly (13 June 2004). "The trials of Franz Kafka". The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2004/jun/13/biography.highereducation.
117. ↑ Pérez-Álvarez 2003, pp. 181–194.
118. ↑ Miller 1984, pp. 242–306.
119. ↑ McElroy 1985, pp. 217–232.
120. ↑ Coralli, Alessia; Perciaccante, Antonio (12 April 2016). "Franz Kafka: An emblematic case of the co-occurrence of sleep and psychiatric disorders". Sleep Science (Sleep Sci) 9 (1): 5–6. doi:10.1016/j.slsci.2016.02.177. PMID 27217905.
121. ↑ Lachkar 1992, p. 30.
122. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 139–140.
123. ↑ Fichter 1988, pp. 231–238.
124. ↑ Gilman 1995, pp. 63ff, 160–163.
125. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 128.
126. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 86.
127. ↑ 127.0 127.1 Lib.com 2008.
128. ↑ Bergman 1969, p. 8.
129. ↑ 129.0 129.1 129.2 Bruce 2007, p. 17.
130. ↑ Preece 2001, p. 131.
131. ↑ Hughes 1986, pp. 248–249.
132. ↑ Bathrick 1995, pp. 67–70.
133. ↑ 133.0 133.1 133.2 133.3 Socialist Worker 2007.
134. ↑ History Guide 2006.
135. ↑ 135.0 135.1 135.2 Haaretz 2008.
136. ↑ Gilman 2005, p. 31.
137. ↑ Franz Kafka. Diaries. Schocken, 2022. eg. Re: 1. Judaism 24, 99, 109, 181, 184, 324, 383, 383, 405, 583n243, 587n332. 2. Talmud 106-7, 134, 136, 142, 164, 172, 183, 189, 397, 592n441, 3. Kabballah 142, 163, 190, 587n333, 621n945, 622n956.
138. ↑ Diaries, p. 467.
139. ↑ Die Sammlung. Querido, Amsterdam, 1983 [reprint].ISBN 90-214-7495-6 Re: 22 July 1935 issue.
140. ↑ "Ghetto – Etymology, Origin & Meaning" (in en-US). https://www.etymonline.com/word/ghetto.
141. ↑ 141.0 141.1 141.2 Breon Mitchell. "Foreword." Franz Kafka. The Trial. Schocken, 1998. p. x, xi, xii
142. ↑ Buber was a publisher, impresario and promoter of Kafka, Brod, Walter Benjamin and Gershom Scholem early in their careers.
143. ↑ Martin Buber. The Letters of Martin Buber New York: Schocken Books, 1991, p. 431.
144. ↑ RE: Building the Great Wall of China etc.
145. ↑ E.g. Josephine the Mouse-Singer et al.,
146. ↑ e.g. "A Country Doctor", partly inspired by Kafka's uncle/sometimes-roommate—an assimilated Jew and country doctor.
147. ↑ Walter Benjamin. "Franz Kafka: On the Tenth Anniversary of his Death". First published 1934 in the Judischer Rundschau.
148. ↑ Walter Benjamin. "Some Remarks on Kafka".
149. ↑ Benjamin wrote the tenth anniversary text, Arendt the twentieth. Arendt is responding to and updating many of the issues raised by Benjamin without attribution (Benjamin's article had been deformed by abbreviation in the Judischer Rundschau and Benjamin himself was a complete obscurity at the time with many of his important writings unpublished and unknown to readers of the Partisan Review. Over the following 25 years, Arendt, Gershom Scholem, and Theodor W. Adorno would take steps that in the 1960s brought Benjamin acknowledgement as an important thinker by writers such as Susan Sontag, John Berger, and Marshall McLuhan. He became recognized as an authority on Kafka after the English-language publication of his Illuminations in 1968, with its essays on Kafka: "On the Tenth Anniversary of His Death" and "Some Reflections on Kafka".
150. ↑ 150.0 150.1 Arendt, Hannah (1994). Essays in Understanding, 1930-1954. Internet Archive. New York and London: Harcourt, Brace & Co.. pp. 61–80. ISBN 978-0-15-172817-6. http://archive.org/details/essaysinundersta00aren.
151. ↑ Elisabeth Young-Bruehl. Hannah Arendt: For Love of the World.
152. ↑ Connolly 2008.
153. ↑ Harper's 2008.
154. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 119–126.
155. ↑ Bloom 1994, p. 428.
156. ↑ Kahn & Hook 1993, p. 191.
157. ↑ 157.0 157.1 157.2 Rothkirchen 2005, p. 23.
158. ↑ Tal, Josef. Tonspur – Auf Der Suche Nach Dem Klang Des Lebens. Berlin: Henschel, 2005. pp. 43–44
159. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 196.
160. ↑ "The Hunters of Lost Books: New Project Finds and Digitizes Books Looted in WWII". Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2024-01-11/ty-article-magazine/.premium/the-hunters-of-lost-books-new-project-finds-and-digitizes-books-looted-in-wwii/0000018c-f81b-d432-a7ae-fffbb9fd0000.
161. ↑ Bloom 2011.
162. ↑ Believer 2006.
163. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 209–211.
164. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 211.
165. ↑ 165.0 165.1 165.2 Ackermann 1950, p. 106.
166. ↑ F. Kafka, New Jewish Cemetery, Prague: Marsyas 1991, p. 56
167. ↑ Meisler, Stanley (1987-07-06). "Franz Kafka Wrote in German: Czechs Pay Scant Homage to Their Greatest Writer" (in en-US). https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1987-07-06-mn-1310-story.html.
168. ↑ Batuman, Elif (22 September 2010). "Kafka's Last Trial". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/magazine/26kafka-t.html.
169. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 2.
170. ↑ Murray 2004, pp. 367.
171. ↑ Furst 1992, p. 84.
172. ↑ Pawel 1985, pp. 160–163.
173. ↑ 173.0 173.1 173.2 Brod 1966, p. 388.
174. ↑ Brod 1966114f
175. ↑ Ernst 2010.
176. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 159, 192.
177. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 113.
178. ↑ 178.0 178.1 Brod 1960, p. 129.
179. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 113.
180. ↑ 180.0 180.1 Sokel 1956, pp. 203–214.
181. ↑ 181.0 181.1 Luke 1951, pp. 232–245.
182. ↑ Dodd 1994, pp. 165–168.
183. ↑ Gray 2005, p. 131.
184. ↑ Horstkotte 2009.
185. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 113.
186. ↑ Brod 1960, pp. 128, 135, 218.
187. ↑ Koelb 2010, p. 34.
188. ↑ Sussman 1979, pp. 72–94.
189. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 79.
190. ↑ Brod 1960, p. 137.
191. ↑ Stach 2005, pp. 108–115, 147, 139, 232.
192. ↑ 192.0 192.1 192.2 Kakutani 1988.
193. ↑ Boyd 2004, p. 139.
194. ↑ Rastalsky 1997, p. 1.
195. ↑ 195.0 195.1 195.2 Granta 1992.
196. ↑ Testament 1999.
197. ↑ Sawicki, Nicholas (29 September 2021). "Kafka, the Artist". https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/kafka-the-artist/.
198. ↑ Schmid, Franziska (16 December 2021). "Trove of Kafka's drawings reveals his 'cheerful side'". https://www.futurity.org/franz-kafka-drawings-2671862-2/.
199. ↑ Franz Kafka: The Drawings, edited by Andreas Kilcher, in collaboration with Pavel Schmidt ; with essays by Judith Butler and Andreas Kilcher; translations from the German by Kurt Beals. Review
200. ↑ Wolfe 2022.
201. ↑ 201.0 201.1 201.2 201.3 201.4 Itk 2008.
202. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 94.
203. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 61.
204. ↑ Stach 2005, p. 343.
205. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 110.
206. ↑ 206.0 206.1 206.2 European Graduate School, Articles 2012.
207. ↑ Brod 1966, p. 115.
208. ↑ Leiter 1958, pp. 337–347.
209. ↑ Krolop 1994, p. 103.
210. ↑ Ackermann 1950, p. 105.
211. ↑ Kafka 1988, publisher's notes.
212. ↑ McCarthy 2009.
213. ↑ Diamant, Kathi, Kafka's Last Love: The Mystery of Dora Diamant, p. 132.
214. ↑ Butler 2011, pp. 3–8.
215. ↑ 215.0 215.1 Kafka Project SDSU 2012.
216. ↑ Contijoch 2000.
217. ↑ Kafka 2009, p. xxvii.
218. ↑ 218.0 218.1 Diamant 2003, p. 144.
219. ↑ Classe 2000, p. 749.
220. ↑ Jewish Heritage 2012.
221. ↑ 221.0 221.1 221.2 Kafka 1998, publisher's notes.
222. ↑ O'Neill 2004, p. 681.
223. ↑ 223.0 223.1 Adler 1995.
224. ↑ Oxford Kafka Research Centre 2012.
225. ↑ Kafka, Franz, The Diaries, translated by Ross Benjamin, New York: Schocken Books, 2023.
226. ↑ "The Kafka You Never Knew" (Review by Dwight Garner of Ross Benjamin's translation of Kafka's Diaries), The New York Times, 11 January 2023.
227. ↑ Benjamin 2024.
228. ↑ Guardian 2010.
229. ↑ New York Times 2010.
230. ↑ Buehrer 2011.
231. ↑ 231.0 231.1 Lerman 2010.
232. ↑ Rudoren & Noveck 2012.
233. ↑ Glazer 2017.
234. ↑ 234.0 234.1 234.2 Ackermann 1950, p. 108.
235. ↑ Ackermann 1950, pp. 106–107.
236. ↑ Ackermann 1950, pp. 107–108.
237. ↑ Ackermann 1950, p. 107.
238. ↑ 238.0 238.1 Kafka, Franz (2012). "Translator's Introduction by Breon Mitchell". The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text. The Schocken Kafka Library. Breon Mitchell. Westminster: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8052-0999-0.
239. ↑ 239.0 239.1 Ackermann 1950, p. 109.
240. ↑ Ackermann 1950, pp. 108–109.
241. ↑ Bloom 2002, p. 206.
242. ↑ Durantaye 2007, pp. 315–317.
243. ↑ Kafka-Franz 2012.
244. ↑ Paris Review 2012.
245. ↑ 245.0 245.1 Gale Research 1979, pp. 288–311.
246. ↑ 246.0 246.1 246.2 Bossy 2001, p. 100.
247. ↑ Furst 1992, p. 83.
248. ↑ Sokel 2001, pp. 102–109.
249. ↑ Burrows 2011.
250. ↑ Panichas 2004, pp. 83–107.
251. ↑ Gray 1973, p. 3.
252. ↑ Kavanagh 1972, pp. 242–253.
253. ↑ Rahn 2011.
254. ↑ Kafka, Franz (2024). Selected Stories, translated and edited by Mark Harman. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p. 27.
255. ↑ Kundera 1988, pp. 82–99.
256. ↑ "Franz Kafka: A Revaluation" (in en-US). https://contemporarythinkers.org/hannah-arendt/essay/franz-kafka-revaluation-partisan-review-11-4-1944/.
257. ↑ Steiner, George (1970). "The Hollow Miracle". Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman. Internet Archive. New York, Atheneum. pp. 8. http://archive.org/details/languagesilenceg0000unse.
258. ↑ Steiner, George (1970). "Silence and the Poet". Language and Silence: Essays on Language, Literature, and the Inhuman. Internet Archive. New York, Atheneum. pp. 50. http://archive.org/details/languagesilenceg0000unse.
259. ↑ Benjamin, Walter (1938). "Some Reflections on Kafka" (in English). Illuminations. New York: Schocken (published 1968). pp. 141–145. http://archive.org/details/IlluminationsEssaysAndReflections. "Kafka's work is an ellipse with foci that are far apart and are determined, on the one hand, by mystical experience (in particular, the experience of tradition) and, on the other, by the experience of the modern big-city dweller. In speaking of the experience of the big-city dweller, I have a variety of things in mind. On the one hand, I think of the modern citizen who knows that he is at the mercy of a vast machinery of officialdom whose functioning is directed by authorities that remain nebulous to the executive organs, let alone to the people they deal with."
260. ↑ Adorno, Theodor W. (1983). "Notes on Kafka". Prisms. Internet Archive. Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-51025-7. http://archive.org/details/prisms0000ador.
261. ↑ Rosenbaum, Ron (1998). "Ch. 17: George Steiner: Singling out the Jewish 'Invention of Conscience'". Explaining Hitler: The Search for the Origins of His Evil (1st ed.). New York: Random House. ISBN 9780679431510.
262. ↑ Kafka, Franz (1992). "Introduction by George Steiner". The Trial. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-679-40994-6.
263. ↑ Glen 2007.
264. ↑ 264.0 264.1 Banakar 2010.
265. ↑ 265.0 265.1 Glen 2011, pp. 47–94.
266. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 216–218.
267. ↑ Preece 2001, pp. 15–31.
268. ↑ Hawes 2008, pp. 212–214.
269. ↑ Ziolkowski 2003, p. 224.
270. ↑ Corngold et al. 2009, pp. xi, 169, 188, 388.
271. ↑ Ghosh 2009.
272. ↑ Harel 2020, p. 2.
273. ↑ Murnane, Barry, "'Like a Dog': Beyond the Human in Kafka's Works", in Robertson, Ritchie, ed. (2024). Kafka: Making of an Icon. Oxford: Bodleian Library Publishing, p. 87.
274. ↑ Kafka, Franz (2024). Selected Stories, translated and edited by Mark Harman. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, p. 45.
275. ↑ Warodell, Johan Adam (April 2023). "The Absence of Animals in Kafka's Fiction" (in en). MLN 138 (3): 1113–1131. doi:10.1353/mln.2023.a917913. ISSN 1080-6598. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/917913. Quotations on p. 1129.
276. ↑ Mai 2022.
277. ↑ Drake, William A. (1 November 1925). "A Report for an Academy". New York Herald Tribune: p. SM7.
278. ↑ "Franz Kafka | Modernist Archives Publishing Project". http://www.modernistarchives.com/person/franz-kafka.
279. ↑ Guardian 1930.
280. ↑ Koelb 2010, p. 69.
281. ↑ Kafka 1948, pp. 3–4.
282. ↑ Kafka 1954, publisher's notes.
283. ↑ Sokel 2001, p. 63.
284. ↑ Preece 2001, p. 167.
285. ↑ Preece 2001, pp. xv, 225.
286. ↑ Kirsch 2009.
287. ↑ Kafka 1996, p. xi.
288. ↑ Newmark 1991, pp. 63–64.
289. ↑ Bloom 2003, pp. 23–26.
290. ↑ Prinsky 2002.
291. ↑ Lawson 1960, pp. 216–219.
292. ↑ Rhine 1989, pp. 447–458.
293. ↑ Corngold 1973, p. 10.
294. ↑ Kafka 1996, p. 75.
295. ↑ Hawes 2008, p. 50.
296. ↑ Hawes 2008, p. 4.
297. ↑ Hannelore Hahn, The Influence of Franz Kafka on Three Novels by Gabriel García Márquez, P. Lang 1993
298. ↑ Lenka Žehrová "Sur les traces de Franz Kafka dans l'œuvre de Milan Kundera // In the footsteps of Franz Kafka in the work of Milan Kundera"
299. ↑ Peter Morgan Ismail Kadare: The Writer and the Dictatorship 1957–1990 Routledge 2017, p. 229
300. ↑ 300.0 300.1 Sandbank 1992, pp. 441–443.
301. ↑ Financial Times 2009.
302. ↑ Silverman 1986, pp. 129–130.
303. ↑ Mareş 2014.
304. ↑ Lotta Lotass. "Stig Dagerman (1923–1954)" (in sv). litteraturbanken.se. https://litteraturbanken.se/författare/DagermanS.
305. ↑ Aris Fioretos (14 July 2023). "Som en hund slet Stig Dagerman köttet från knotorna" (in Swedish). Dagens Nyheter. https://www.dn.se/kultur/aris-fioretos-som-en-hund-slet-stig-dagerman-kottet-fran-knotorna/.
306. ↑ Masaki Mori Haruki Murakami and His Early Work: The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Running Artist, Rowman & Littlefield 2021
307. ↑ "Samsa in Love"
308. ↑ LiteraturHaus 1999.
309. ↑ Bloom 2010, p. 8.
310. ↑ Coker 2012.
311. ↑ Henze 1951.
312. ↑ Singer 1970, p. 311.
313. ↑ 313.0 313.1 Adams 2002, pp. 140–157.
314. ↑ Welles Net 1962.
315. ↑ Elsaesser 2004, p. 117.
316. ↑ Conrad, Anna (14 July 2020). "How Joy Division made Closer: 'We were really tight as a band; there was a lot of telepathy going on'" (in en-GB). https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/joy-division-closer-album.
317. ↑ "How Franz Kafka inspired one of Joy Division's underrated gems - Far Out Magazine" (in en-US). 3 May 2021. https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/joy-division-ian-curtis-inspired-by-franz-kafka-for-colony/.
318. ↑ Finkle, David. "Kafka: The Beloved, Truly Awesome Writer, Brilliantly Conjured" New York Stage Review.
319. ↑ Opera Today 2010.
320. ↑ Times Literary Supplement 2005.
321. ↑ Aldiss, Brian W. (1991). Better Morphosis, in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, June 1991. Subsequently reprinted in the Aldiss collections Bodily Functions and A Tupolev Too Far and Other Stories.
322. ↑ Writer's Institute 1992.
323. ↑ "Robert Smith's Reading List" (in en-US). 31 March 2021. https://radicalreads.com/robert-smith-favorite-books/.
324. ↑ Herbort 1992.
325. ↑ New York Times 1993.
326. ↑ Dembo 1996, p. 106.
327. ↑ Akalaitis 2001.
328. ↑ Gotrich, Lars (2015-04-01). "Sharpless Covers The Greatest Cartoon Rock Opera Ever" (in en). NPR. https://www.npr.org/sections/allsongs/2015/04/01/396595807/vikings-choice-sharpless-franz-kafka-home-movies-cover.
329. ↑ Updike 2005.
330. ↑ Thomas, Alfred (2015). "Kafka's Statue : Memory and Forgetting in Postsocialist Prague". Revue des études slaves 86 (1/2): 157–169. doi:10.4000/res.677.
331. ↑ Ruders 2005.
332. ↑ Milner 2005.
333. ↑ BBC 2012.
334. ↑ HAZE 2012.
335. ↑ Bury 2013.
336. ↑ Rizzulo 2013.
337. ↑ Jeal 2014.
338. ↑ "Statue of Kafka". 2 March 2017. http://www.prague.eu/en/object/places/1886/statue-of-kafka.
339. ↑ "Is literature next in line for virtual-reality treatment?". The Economist. 8 March 2018. https://www.economist.com/books-and-arts/2018/03/08/is-literature-next-in-line-for-virtual-reality-treatment.
340. ↑ "50 Canadian fiction books we're excited about this fall". August 21, 2025. https://www.cbc.ca/books/fiction-preview-fall-2025-1.7595672.
341. ↑ Gray, Carmen (5 September 2025). "'Nothing Is Final With Kafka': Agnieszka Holland on 'Franz' and Rehumanising a Legend.". https://thefilmverdict.com/nothing-is-final-with-kafka-agnieszka-holland-on-franz-and-rehumanising-a-legend/.
342. ↑ Based on Balint, Benjamin (2018). Kafka's Last Trial.
343. ↑ "Kafkaesque." Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Retrieved 1 March 2021.
344. ↑ Aizenberg 1986, pp. 11–19.
345. ↑ Strelka 1984, pp. 434–444.
346. ↑ Anthony Lane (30 August 2019). "The Hour of Reckoning Descends in Mr. Klein". The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/09/09/the-hour-of-reckoning-descends-in-mr-klein. Retrieved 2 July 2024.
347. ↑ Palmer 2004, pp. 159–192.
348. ↑ O'Connor 1987.
349. ↑ Los Angeles Times 2009.
350. ↑ Ivana Edwards (29 December 1991). "The Essence of 'Kafkaesque'". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/29/nyregion/the-essence-of-kafkaesque.html.
351. ↑ Fassler, Joe (January 2014). "What It Really Means to Be 'Kafkaesque'". The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/01/what-it-really-means-to-be-kafkaesque/283096/.
352. ↑ Schmadel, Lutz D. (2003). "(3412) Kafka". Dictionary of Minor Planet Names (Springer Berlin Heidelberg): p. 284. doi:10.1007/978-3-540-29925-7_3412. ISBN 978-3-540-00238-3.
353. ↑ "3412 Kafka". 1983. http://www.minorplanetcenter.net/db_search/show_object?object_id=3412.
354. ↑ Kafka Museum 2005.
355. ↑ 355.0 355.1 355.2 Kafka Society 2011.

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* Sandbank, Shimon (1992). "After Kafka: The Influence of Kafka's Fiction". Comparative Literature Studies (Oxford) 29 (4): 441–443.
* Sokel, Walter H. (April–May 1956). "Kafka's 'Metamorphosis': Rebellion and Punishment". Monatshefte (Madison, Wisconsin) 48 (4): 203–214. http://msmitchellsaplit12.weebly.com/uploads/4/6/7/4/4674576/12_kafkas_metamorphosis_-_rebellion_and_punishment.pdf.
* Steinhauer, Harry (Autumn 1983). "Franz Kafka: A World Built on a Lie". The Antioch Review (Yellow Springs, Ohio) 41 (4): 390–408. doi:10.2307/4611280.
* Strelka, Joseph P. (Winter 1984). "Kafkaesque Elements in Kafka's Novels and in Contemporary Narrative Prose". Comparative Literature Studies (Pennsylvania State College) 21 (4): 434–444.
* Updike, John (24 January 2005). "Subconscious Tunnels: Haruki Murakami's Dreamlike New Novel". The New Yorker. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2005/01/24/subconscious-tunnels. Retrieved 22 September 2012.

* Wolfe, Shira (2022). "The Other Franz Kafka — The Visionary Writer's Drawings That Were Meant To Be Destroyed". Artland Magazine. https://magazine.artland.com/franz-kafka-drawings/. Retrieved 23 February 2025.

Newspapers

* Mareş, Ionuţ (23 August 2014). "Mircea Cărtărescu: Franz Kafka este sfântul literaturii" (in Romanian). https://www.ziarulmetropolis.ro/mircea-cartarescu-franz-kafka-este-sfantul-literaturii/.
* Adler, Jeremy (13 October 1995). "Stepping into Kafka's Head". The New York Times Literary Supplement. http://www.textkritik.de/rezensionen/kafka/einl_04.htm.
* Akalaitis, JoAnne (10 June 2001). "Theatre; Adapting the Horrors of a Kafka Story to Suit Glass's Music". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/10/arts/theater-adapting-the-horrors-of-a-kafka-story-to-suit-glass-s-music.html.
* Apel, Friedman (28 August 2012). "Der Weg in die Ewigkeit führt abwärts / Roland Reuß kramt in Kafkas Zürauer Zetteln" (in de). Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
* Banville, John (14 January 2011). "Franz Kafka's Other Trial / An Allegory of the Fallen Man's Predicament, or an Expression of Guilt at a Tormented Love Affair?". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/15/john-banville-kafka-trial-rereading.
* Buehrer, Jack (9 March 2011). "Battle for Kafka Legacy Drags On". The Prague Post. http://www.praguepost.com/news/7768-battle-for-kafka-legacy-drags-on.html.
* Burrows, William (22 December 2011). "Winter Read: The Castle by Franz Kafka". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/dec/22/franz-kafka-winter-reads.
* Connolly, Kate (14 August 2008). "Porn Claims Outrage German Kafka Scholars". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2008/aug/15/franzkafka.germany.
* Glazer, Hilo (18 February 2017). "A Final Note From Kafka, a Trove of Manuscripts, and a Trial That Left an Israeli Heiress 'Destitute'". Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2017-02-18/ty-article-magazine/.premium/a-note-from-kafka-a-trial-and-a-destitute-heiress/0000017f-f054-d223-a97f-fddddb060000.
* Herbort, Heinz Josef (11 September 1992). "Franz Kafkas Roman "Das Schloß" als Musiktheater: Aribert Reimanns sechste Oper in Berlin uraufgeführt: Rundtanz um den Tabernakel der Bürokratie" (in de). Die Zeit: p. 23. http://www.zeit.de/1992/38/rundtanz-um-den-tabernakel-der-buerokratie/komplettansicht.
* Jeal, Erica (18 March 2014). "The Commission/Café Kafka, Royal Opera/Opera North/Aldeburgh Music – Review". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/mar/18/the-commission-cafe-kafka-royal-opera-and-opera-north.
* Kakutani, Michiko (2 April 1988). "Books of the Times; Kafka's Kafkaesque Love Letters". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/02/books/books-of-the-times-kafka-s-kafkaesque-love-letters.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
* Kenley-Letts, Ruth (1993). "Franz Kafka's "It's a Wonderful Life" (1993)". The New York Times. https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/239041/Franz-Kafka-s-It-s-a-Wonderful-Life-/details.
* Kirsch, Adam (2 January 2009). "America, 'Amerika'". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/04/books/review/Kirsch-t.html?pagewanted=all&_moc.semityn.www.
* Lerman, Antony (22 July 2010). "The Kafka legacy: Who Owns Jewish Heritage?". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jul/22/kafka-legacy-israel.
* McCarthy, Rory (24 October 2009). "Israel's National Library Adds a Final Twist to Franz Kafka's Trial". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/oct/25/israel-library-franz-kafka-trial.
* McLellan, Dennis (15 January 2009). "Patrick McGoohan Dies at 80; TV's 'Secret Agent' and 'Prisoner'". Los Angeles Times. http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-me-patrick-mcgoohan15-2009jan15,0,3951859.story.
* Metcalfe, Anna (5 December 2009). "Small Talk: José Saramago". Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/bfaf51ba-e05a-11de-8494-00144feab49a.
* O'Connor, John J. (4 June 1987). "McGoohan a Spy on 31". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/1987/06/04/arts/mcgoohan-a-spy-on-31.html.
* Rizzulo, Rachel (23 September 2013). "The Royal Ballet's Production of The Metamorphosis with Edward Watson in New York". bachtrack. http://bachtrack.com/review-nyc-joyce-theater-royal-ballet-metamorphosis.
* Rudoren, Jodi; Noveck, Myra (14 October 2012). "Woman Must Relinquish Kafka Papers, Judge Says". The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/15/world/middleeast/woman-must-relinquish-kafka-papers-judge-says.html.
* Tran, Mark (19 July 2010). "Lawyers open cache of unpublished Kafka manuscripts". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/jul/19/lawyers-open-unpublished-kafka-manuscripts.

Online sources

* Banville, John (2013). "Kafka's Repressed Homosexuality" (in en). https://www.connellguides.com/blogs/news/84687044-kafka-s-repressed-homosexuality.
* Benjamin, Ross (27 April 2024). "Sex, insomnia and swimming trunks: an exclusive extract from Kafka's uncensored diaries" (in en). https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/sex-insomnia-swimming-trunks-exclusive-140000461.html.
* Bury, Liz (3 July 2013). "Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis Becomes Google Doodle". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jul/03/franz-kafka-metamorphosis-google-doodle.
* Coker, Rachel (4 January 2012). "Kafka Expert Links Teaching, Research". Binghamton: State University of New York. http://www.binghamton.edu/inside/index.php/inside/story/kafka-expert-links-teaching-research.
* Ernst, Nathan (2010). "The Judgement". The Modernism Lab. Yale University. http://modernism.research.yale.edu/wiki/index.php/The_Judgment.
* Ghosh, Pothik (13 March 2009). "A Note on Kafka and the Question of Revolutionary Subjectivity". Hindu College – Delhi University. http://radicalnotes.com/content/view/92/39.
* Horstkotte, Silke (2009). "Kunst und Künstlerverständnis in Kafkas 'Josefine, die Sängering oder Das Volk der Mäuse'" (in de). University of Leipzig. http://dokumente-online.com/kunst-und-kuenstlerverstaendnis-in-kafkas.html.
* Kafka, Franz (2012). "Franz Kafka Letter to his Father". Kafka-Franz. http://www.kafka-franz.com/KAFKA-letter.htm.
* Keynes, Laura (August 2005). "Kafka's Dick". Times Literary Supplement. http://www.onlinereviewlondon.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=215:kafkas-dick&catid=161:kafkas-dick&Itemid=243.
* Köhler, Manfred (2012). "Franz Kafka und Felice Bauer" (in de). Protemion. http://www.protemion.de/zettel/kafkafelice.htm.
* Kreis, Steven (28 February 2006). "Franz Kafka, 1883–1924". History Guide. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/kafka.html.
* Milner, Catherine (27 August 2005). "If Kafka Made the Dinner...". The Telegraph. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/3321254/If-Kafka-made-the-dinner....html.
* Miron, Dan (24 November 2008). "Sadness in Palestine". Haaretz. https://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1040561.html.
* Ozorio, Anne (18 November 2010). "György Kurtág – Kafka Fragments, London". Opera Today. http://www.operatoday.com/content/2010/11/gyorgy_kurtag_-.php.
* Prinsky, Norman (2002). "Humn. 2002: World Humanities II. Notes and Questions on Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" / "The Transformation"". Augusta State University. http://www.aug.edu/~nprinsky/Humn2002/KafkaMetamorphNQ.htm.
* Rahn, Josh (2011). "Existentialism". Online Literature. http://www.online-literature.com/periods/existentialism.php.
* Rastalsky, Hartmut M. (1997). "The Referential Kafka". University of Michigan. http://www.lsa.umich.edu/german/hmr/dissertation/10kafka.doc.
* Samuelson, Arthur. "A Kafka for the 21st Century". Jewish Heritage. http://www.jhom.com/bookshelf/kafka/intro.html.
* Seubert, Harald. "Bauer, Felice" (in de). Kulturportal-west-ost.eu. http://kulturportal-west-ost.eu/biographies/bauer-felice-2/. "Knochiges leeres Gesicht, das seine Leere offen trug. Freier Hals. Überworfene Bluse ... Fast zerbrochene Nase. Blondes, etwas steifes, reizloses Haar, starkes Kinn."
* Stone, Peter H. (1981). "Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Art of Fiction No. 69". The Paris Review Winter 1981 (82). http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction-no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
* B.S. (4 April 1930). "Allegory". The Guardian (London). https://www.theguardian.com/books/1930/apr/04/classics.culture.
* "Disappearing Act". American Repertory Theatre. 2005. http://www.amrep.org/articles/3_3c/disappearing.html.
* "Drama on BBC Radio 3, Kafka the Musical". BBC. 2012. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b010glpd.
* "Franz Kafka" (in cs). The Research Library of South Bohemia in České Budějovice. 2011. http://www.kohoutikriz.org/priloha/kafka.php.
* "Franz Kafka – Articles". European Graduate School. 2012. http://www.egs.edu/library/franz-kafka/articles/.
* "Franz Kafka – Biography". European Graduate School. 2012. http://www.egs.edu/library/franz-kafka/biography/.
* "Ein Landarzt Rundfunkoper auf die Erzählung von Franz Kafka" (in de). Hans Werner Henze Stiftung. http://www.hans-werner-henze-stiftung.de/hans-werner-henze/werkverzeichnis/detail/news/detail/News/ein-landarzt/.
* "Franz Kafka and Libertarian Socialism". Libertarian-Socialism. 14 December 2008. http://libcom.org/library/franz-kafka-libertarian-socialism.
* "Franz Kafka Museum". Franz Kafka Museum. 2005. https://kafkamuseum.cz/en/.
* "The Franz Kafka Prize". Franz Kafka Society. 2011. http://www.franzkafka-soc.cz/cena-franze-kafky/.
* "Franz Kafka Writing". Kafka-Franz. 2011. http://www.kafka-franz.com/franz-kafka-writing.htm.
* "Franz Kafka: Writing of the System's Despair and Alienation". Socialist Worker (Britain) (Socialist Worker Online). 17 March 2007. http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=10923.
* "Faksimiles der Kafka-Drucke zu Lebzeiten (Zeitschriften und Zeitungen)" (in de). ITK Institut für Textkritik. 2008. http://www.textkritik.de/kafkazs/kafkadrucke.htm.
* "Grete Bloch" (in de). S. Fischer Verlag. https://www.franzkafka.de/leben/frauen/grete-bloch.
* "Kafka". New York State Writer's Institute. State University of New York. http://www.albany.edu/writers-inst/webpages4/filmnotes/fnf01n6.html.
* "Kafka's Drawings". Granta. 16 May 2022. https://granta.com/kafkas-drawings/.
* Kafka, Franz (1921). "Kafkas Testamente" (in de). Franz Kafka. https://www.franzkafka.de/fundstuecke/kafkas-testamente.
* "Lothar Hempel". Atlegerhardsen. 2002. http://www.atlegerhardsen.com/pages/lothar_hempel/presse_eng_0802.htm.
* "Musils 'Mann ohne Eigenschaften' ist 'wichtigster Roman des Jahrhunderts'" (in de). LiteraturHaus. 1999. http://www.literaturhaus.at/headlines/1999/01/142/.
* "Orson Welles on The Trial (BBC interview)". Welles Net. 1962. http://www.wellesnet.com/trial bbc interview.htm.
* "Oxford Kafka Research Centre". University of Oxford. 2012. http://www.kafka-research.ox.ac.uk/.
* "Poul Ruders Biography – 06/2005". Poul Ruders. June 2005. http://www.poulruders.net/biography.htm.
* "Solving a Literary Mystery". Kafka Project, San Diego State University. 2012. http://www.kafkaproject.com/.
* "Sound Interpretations – Dedication To Franz Kafka". HAZE Netlabel. 2012. http://h-a-z-e.org/archives/1059.
* "Who Is Citizen? Guide to Czech Citizenship in 1918–1949". Embassy of the Czech Republic in Tel Aviv. 25 October 2012. http://www.mzv.cz/telaviv/en/visa_and_consular_services/citizenship/who_is_citizen_guide_to_czech.html.
* "Doctor of Law 18 June 1906 – Registry books of the German University in Prague, inventory No. 3, Registry book of doctors of the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague/German University in Prague (1904–1924), page 42". Charles University Prague. https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/archiv/public/book/bo/1971898055542710/46/?lang=en.
* "Exam 22 March 1906 – Faculty of Law of the German University in Prague, Books of examination protocols of State Examination Commissions, inventory No. 75, State Scientific State Examination Commission at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (1905-1906), page 8595". Charles University Prague. https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/archiv/public/book/bo/1363411740766242/274/?lang=en.
* "Exam 23 (Nov?) 1905 – Faculty of Law of the German University in Prague, Books of examination protocols of State Examination Commissions, inventory No. 44, Judicial State Examination Commission at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (1905-1907), page 10639". Charles University Prague. https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/archiv/public/book/bo/1979029190676775/158/?lang=en.
* "Exam 18 July 1903 – Faculty of Law of the German University in Prague, Books of examination protocols of State Examination Commissions, inventory No. 10, Juridical Historical State Examination Commission at the German Charles-Ferdinand University in Prague (1902-1903), page 12789". Charles University Prague. https://is.cuni.cz/webapps/archiv/public/book/bo/1299922811952459/657/?lang=en.

## Further reading

* Anderson, Mark, ed. (1989). Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics, and the Fin de Siècle. New York: Schocken Books.
* Balint, Benjamin (2018). Kafka's Last Trial: The Strange Case of a Literary Legacy. New York: Pan Macmillan. ISBN 9781324001317. Also published by W. W. Norton & Company as Kafka's Last Trial: The Case of a Literary Legacy.
* Baruffi, Alessandro (2016). The Tales of Franz Kafka: English Translation with Original Text in German. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: LiteraryJoint Press. ISBN 978-1-329-82109-5.
* Begley, Louis (2008). The Tremendous World I Have Inside My Head, Franz Kafka: A Biographical Essay. New York: Atlas & Co.. ISBN 978-1-934633-06-9. https://archive.org/details/tremendousworldi0000begl.
* Calasso, Roberto (2005). K.. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-4000-4189-3. https://archive.org/details/k00cala.
* Citati, Pietro (1987). Kafka. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-56840-9. https://archive.org/details/kafka00cita.
* Coots, Steve (2002). Franz Kafka (Beginner's Guide). London: Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-0-340-84648-3.
* Corngold, Stanley; Wagner, Benno (2011). Franz Kafka: The Ghosts in the Machine. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press. ISBN 978-0-8101-2769-2.
* Corngold, Stanley; Gross, Ruth V. (2011). Kafka for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Camden House. ISBN 978-1-57113-482-0.
* Czech, Danuta (1992) (in pl). Kalendarz wydarzeń w KL Auschwitz. Oświęcim: Wydawn.
* Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Félix (1986). Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature. Theory and History of Literature. 30. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-1515-5.
* Duttlinger, Carolin (2007). Kafka and Photography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-921945-2.
* Duttlinger, Carolin (2013). The Cambridge Introduction to Franz Kafka. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-75771-3.
* Frenkel, Sheera (30 May 2012). "Kafka's Final Absurdist Tale Plays Out in Tel Aviv". NPR. https://www.npr.org/2012/05/30/153985994/kafkas-final-absurdist-tale-plays-out-in-tel-aviv.
* Gray, Ronald (1962). Kafka: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall. https://archive.org/details/kafkacollectiono00gray.
* Gilman, Sander L. (1995). Franz Kafka: The Jewish Patient. New York: Routledge. ISBN 041591177X.
* Gilman, Sander L. (2005). Franz Kafka. London: Reaktion Books Ltd. ISBN 1 86189 254 3.
* Greenberg, Martin (1968). The Terror of Art: Kafka and Modern Literature. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-08415-9.
* Glatzer, Nahum Norbert (1986). The Loves of Franz Kafka. New York: Schocken Books. ISBN 978-0-8052-4001-6. https://archive.org/details/lovesoffranzkafk00glat.
* Glasauer, Willi (1986) (in es). Exposición Kafka & CIA.: Hitos y Mitos de la Cultura Dibujos. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores.
* Glasauer, Willi (1986). Kafka Gesamtwerk. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores.
* Hayman, Ronald (1981). K: A Biography of Kafka. London: Phoenix Press. ISBN 978-1-84212-415-4.
* Heller, Paul (1989) (in de). Franz Kafka: Wissenschaft und Wissenschaftskritik. Tübingen: Stauffenburg. ISBN 978-3-923721-40-5.
* Hruska, Maïa (2026). Kafkaesque: From Jorge Luis Borges to Primo Levi, Ten Writers Who Translated Kafka and Transformed Twentieth-Century Literature. New York and Dublin, Ireland: HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-348624-9.
* Kopić, Mario (1995). "Franz Kafka and Nationalism". Erewhon: An International Quarterly (Amsterdam) 2 (2).
* Kyodai, Nishioka (2023). Kafka: A Manga Adaptation. Pushkin Press. Graphic adaptations of 9 Kafka short stories.
* Lundberg, Phillip (2011). Essential Kafka: Rendezvous with Otherness. Authorhouse. ISBN 978-1-4389-9021-7.
* Mahler, Nicolas (2024): Completely Kafka: A Comic Biography. Pushkin Press. A graphic biography.
* Mairowitz, David Zane, and Crumb, Robert (1993). Kafka for Beginners. Cheltenham, England: Icon Publishing Ltd; also published as Introducing Kafka (1994). Northampton, Massachusetts: Kitchen Sink Press.
* Major, Michael (2011). Kafka — For Our Time: Journeys of Discovery. San Diego, California: Harcourt Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9567982-1-3.
* Montalbán, Manuel Vázquez; Glasauer, Willi (1988) (in es). Escenas de la Literatura Universal y Retratos de Grandes Autores. Barcelona: Círculo de Lectores.
* Robertson, Ritchie (2004). Kafka: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press; illustrated edition titled Kafka: A Brief Insight. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 2010.
* Robertson, Ritchie, ed. (2024). Kafka: Making of an Icon. Oxford, UK: Bodleian Library Publishing.
* Suchoff, David (2012). Kafka's Jewish Languages: The Hidden Openness of Tradition. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4371-0.
* Thiher, Allen (1990). Franz Kafka: A Study of the Short Fiction. Twayne's Studies in Short Fiction. 12. Boston: Twayne Publishers. ISBN 0805783237.
* Thiher, Allen (2018). Understanding Franz Kafka. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 9781611178289.
* Wagenbach, Klaus (1984). Franz Kafka: Pictures of a Life. New York: Pantheon Books.
* Watroba, Karoina (2024). Metamorphoses: In Search of Franz Kafka. New York: Pegasus Books.

Books on Kafka and Prague

* Eisner, Pavel (1950). Franz Kafka and Prague. New York: Golden Griffin Books.
* Frynta, Emanuel (1960). Kafka and Prague. London: Batchworth Press Limited.
* Gruša, Jiří, translated by Eric Mosbacher (1983). Franz Kafka of Prague. London: Secker & Warburg; New York: Schocken Books.
* Hatefutsoth, Beth (1980). Kafka–Prague. Tel Aviv: The Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora.
* Kállay, Karol (2005). Franz Kafka and Prague. Bratislava: Slovart Publishing Ltd. (Chicago, Illinois: Independent Publishers Group).
* Nekula, Marek (2016). Franz Kafka and His Prague Contexts. Charles University in Prague, Karolinum Press.
* Salfellner, Harald (1998). Franz Kafka and Prague: Third greatly revised and enlarged edition. Prague: Vitalis.
* Salfellner, Harald (2011). Franz Kafka and Prague: A Literary Guide. Prague: Vitalis.
* Wagenbach, Klaus (1996). Kafka's Prague: A Travel Reader. Woodstock, New York: The Overlook Press. ISBN 9780879516444. https://archive.org/details/kafkaspraguetrav00wage/mode/2up. See also Wagenbach (2019), Kafka's Prague, listed in "Sources".
* Železná, Marta, ed. (1998). Kafka and Prague. Third revised edition. Prague: Franz Kafka Publishers.

Journals

* Danta, Chris (April 2008). "Sarah's Laughter: Kafka's Abraham". Modernism/modernity (Baltimore, Maryland) 15 (2): 343–359. doi:10.1353/mod.2008.0048.
* Jirsa, Tomáš (2015). "Reading Kafka Visually: Gothic Ornament and the Motion of Writing in Kafka's Der Process". Central Europe (London) 13 (1–2): 36–50. doi:10.1080/14790963.2015.1107322. https://s3.amazonaws.com/academia.edu.documents/44708599/Reading_Kafka_Visually_Gothic_Ornament_and_the_Motion_of_Writing_in_Kafka_s_Der_Process.pdf?response-content-disposition=inline; filename=Reading_Kafka_Visually_Gothic_Ornament_a.pdf&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=AKIAIWOWYYGZ2Y53UL3A/20200209/us-east-1/s3/aws4_request&X-Amz-Date=20200209T184401Z&X-Amz-Expires=3600&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Signature=e4f053675f5c0365d9dd6f88807e51fd367f0c9578690b45886e993215525654.
* Kopić, Mario (2004). "Kafka and Nationalism". Odjek. http://www.odjek.ba/eng/index.php?broj=02&id=06.
* Margolius, Ivan (January 2025). "Kafka's Motorcycle". The Automobile (Petworth, West Sussex) 42 (11): 28–30. https://www.theautomobile.co.uk/back-issues/.
* Margolius, Ivan (Summer 2025). "Kafka and Cubism". Newsletter The Friends of Czech Heritage (Lewes, East Sussex) (33): 9–11. https://www.czechfriends.net/images/NL33 KafkaArticle.pdf.
* McGee, Kyle. "Fear and Trembling in the Penal Colony". Kafka Project. http://www.kafka.org/index.php?id=185,290,0,0,1,0.
* Pollen, Jared Marcel (December 2025). Kafka Inc.. Liberties: A Journal of Culture and Politics. Washington, D.C.
* Reitter, Paul (Summer 2025). "The Kafka Challenge: Translating the Inimitable". The Hedgehog Review (Charlottesville, Virginia) 27 (2): 54–63. https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/lessons-of-babel/articles/the-kafka-challenge.
* Ryan, Michael P. (1999). "Samsa and Samsara: Suffering, Death and Rebirth in 'The Metamorphosis'". The German Quarterly (Durham, North Carolina) 72 (2): 133–152. doi:10.2307/408369.

## External links

Digital collections

* Works by Franz Kafka in eBook form at Standard Ebooks
* Works by Franz Kafka at Project Gutenberg
* Works by Franz Kafka at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
* Error in Template:Internet Archive author: Franz Kafka doesn't exist.

Physical collections and exhibits

* Franz Kafka's papers and the Bodleian Libraries
* Kafka: Making of an Icon, Exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford from 30 May - 27 October 2024
* Franz Kafka: Manuscripts, drawings and personal letters BBC
* "Franz Kafka", exhibit at the Morgan Library & Museum in Manhattan from 22 November 2024 through 13 April 2025
* Oxford Kafka Research Centre – information on ongoing international Kafka research
* Translated excerpts from Kafka's Diaries 1910–1923
* "New Centenary Exhibition Explores Kafka's Life, Work and Influence", 1 April 2024, finebooksmagazine.com. "Kafka: Making of an Icon ... After the exhibition's run at the Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, from May 30 until October 27, [2024,] it will move to the Morgan Library in New York running November 22 through April 13, 2025". Review: Hutchinson, Ben, "The author as adjective", The Times Literary Supplement, 13 June 2024. Review: Williams, James, "The endless mystique of Franz Kafka", Apollo, July/August 2024

Other databases

* Literature by and about Franz Kafka in the German National Library catalogue
* Franz Kafka at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
* Franz Kafka on IMDb

Miscellaneous links

* Oxford Kafka Research Centre – information on ongoing international Kafka research
* Společnost Franze Kafky a nakladatelství Franze Kafky Franz Kafka Society and Publishing House in Prague
* What makes something "Kafkaesque"? A Ted talk on Kafka, his works and his legacy, by Noah Tavlin
* The Album of Franz Kafka, Franz Kafka receives a tribute in this album of "recomposed photographs".
* Journeys of Franz Kafka Photographs of places where Kafka lived and worked

Franz Kafka

Template:Kafka Template:The Trial Template:The Castle Template:The Metamorphosis

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Modernism

Milestones|

* Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862–1863)
* Olympia (1863)
* A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte (1886)
* Mont Sainte-Victoir (1887)
* The Starry Night (1889)
* Ubu Roi (1896)
* Verklärte Nacht (1899)
* Le bonheur de vivre (1905–1906)
* Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907)
* The Dance (1909–1910)
* The Firebird (1910)
* Afternoon of a Faun (1912)
* Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912)
* The Rite of Spring (1913)
* In Search of Lost Time (1913–1927)
* The Metamorphosis (1915)
* Black Square (1915)
* Fountain (1917)
* The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
* Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921)
* Ulysses (1922)
* The Waste Land (1922)
* The Magic Mountain (1924)
* Battleship Potemkin (1925)
* The Sun Also Rises (1926)
* The Threepenny Opera (1928)
* The Sound and the Fury (1929)
* Un Chien Andalou (1929)
* Villa Savoye (1931)
* The Blue Lotus (1936)
* Fallingwater (1936)
* Waiting for Godot (1953)

Literature|

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Poetry|

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Music|

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Theatre|

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Film|

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Dance|

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Architecture|

* Marcel Breuer
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Existentialism

Concepts|

* Abandonment
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* Authenticity
* Bad faith
* Being in itself
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* Existential crisis
* Facticity
* Meaning
* Nihilism
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Thinkers|

* Nicola Abbagnano
* Hannah Arendt
* Abdel Rahman Badawi
* Hazel Barnes
* Karl Barth
* Nikolai Berdyaev
* Steve Biko
* Martin Buber
* Rudolf Bultmann
* Dino Buzzati
* Albert Camus
* Jane Welsh Carlyle
* Thomas Carlyle
* Emil Cioran
* Walter A. Davis
* Simone de Beauvoir
* Fyodor Dostoevsky
* William A. Earle
* Ralph Ellison
* Frantz Fanon
* Vilém Flusser
* Benjamin Fondane
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* Alberto Giacometti
* Juozas Girnius
* Lewis Gordon
* Martin Heidegger
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* Eugène Ionesco
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* William James
* Karl Jaspers
* Franz Kafka
* Walter Kaufmann
* Søren Kierkegaard
* Ladislav Klíma
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* Ash Lieb
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* Naguib Mahfouz
* Gabriel Marcel
* Vytautas Mačernis
* Maurice Merleau-Ponty
* Friedrich Nietzsche
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* Viktor Petrov
* Franz Rosenzweig
* Jean-Paul Sartre
* Aous Shakra
* Lev Shestov
* Joseph B. Soloveitchik
* Paul Tillich
* Rick Turner
* Miguel de Unamuno
* John Daniel Wild
* Colin Wilson
* Richard Wright
* Peter Wessel Zapffe

Related|

* Phenomenology (philosophy)
* Continental philosophy
* Transcendentalism
* German idealism
* Western Marxism
* Existentialist anarchism
* Existential nihilism
* Atheistic existentialism

* v
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German-language literature

Related articles|

* German language
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* Weimar Classicism
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* Weimar culture
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* Austrian literature
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Related categories|

* Austrian writers
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Medieval literature|

* Der von Kürenberg
* Dietmar von Aist
* Reinmar von Hagenau
* Hartmann von Aue
* Walther von der Vogelweide
* Wolfram von Eschenbach
* Albrecht von Johansdorf
* Heinrich von Morungen
* Gottfried von Strassburg
* Legends about Theoderic the Great
* Nibelungenlied

Early modern
literature|

* Simon Dach
* Paul Fleming
* Hans Folz
* Hans Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen
* Andreas Gryphius
* Christian Hoffmann von Hoffmannswaldau
* Johann Michael Moscherosch
* Martin Opitz
* Hans Sachs
* Angelus Silesius
* Anthony Ulrich, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel
* Georg Wickram

18th century|

* Barthold Heinrich Brockes
* Christian Gellert
* Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
* Johann Christoph Gottsched
* Johann Christian Günther
* Friedrich Hölderlin
* Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock
* Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
* Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
* Novalis (Friedrich von Hardenberg)
* Jean Paul
* Friedrich Schiller
* Johann Gottfried Schnabel
* Christoph Martin Wieland

19th century|

* Bettina von Arnim
* Ludwig Achim von Arnim
* Clemens Brentano
* Georg Büchner
* Adelbert von Chamisso
* Annette von Droste-Hülshoff
* Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
* Joseph von Eichendorff
* Theodor Fontane
* Gustav Freytag
* Jeremias Gotthelf
* Franz Grillparzer
* Jacob Grimm
* Wilhelm Grimm
* Gerhart Hauptmann
* Christian Friedrich Hebbel
* Johann Peter Hebel
* Heinrich Heine
* Georg Herwegh
* Paul Heyse
* E. T. A. Hoffmann
* Friedrich Hölderlin
* Gottfried Keller
* Heinrich von Kleist
* Nikolaus Lenau
* Karl May
* Conrad Ferdinand Meyer
* Eduard Mörike
* Johann Nestroy
* Wilhelm Raabe
* Adalbert Stifter
* Theodor Storm
* Ludwig Tieck
* Ludwig Uhland

20th century|

* May Ayim
* Ingeborg Bachmann
* Hermann Bahr
* Johannes R. Becher
* Gottfried Benn
* Thomas Bernhard
* Heinrich Böll
* Volker Braun
* Bertolt Brecht
* Rolf Dieter Brinkmann
* Hermann Broch
* Arnolt Bronnen
* Hermann Burger
* Elias Canetti
* Paul Celan
* Alfred Döblin
* Heimito von Doderer
* Friedrich Dürrenmatt
* Lion Feuchtwanger
* Marieluise Fleißer
* Erich Fried
* Max Frisch
* Stefan George
* Günter Grass
* Peter Handke
* Marlen Haushofer
* Hermann Hesse
* Georg Heym
* Hugo von Hofmannsthal
* Ödön von Horváth
* Ricarda Huch
* Peter Huchel
* Ernst Jandl
* Uwe Johnson
* Ernst Jünger
* Franz Kafka
* Erich Kästner
* Hermann Kesten
* Irmgard Keun
* Sarah Kirsch
* Egon Erwin Kisch
* Karl Kraus
* Else Lasker-Schüler
* Gert Ledig
* Siegfried Lenz
* Heinrich Mann
* Klaus Mann
* Thomas Mann
* Friederike Mayröcker
* Christian Morgenstern
* Erich Mühsam
* Heiner Müller
* Adolf Muschg
* Robert Musil
* Erich Maria Remarque
* Rainer Maria Rilke
* Joseph Roth
* Nelly Sachs
* Ernst von Salomon
* Paul Scheerbart
* Arthur Schnitzler
* Kurt Schwitters
* W. G. Sebald
* Anna Seghers
* Ernst Toller
* Georg Trakl
* Kurt Tucholsky
* Robert Walser
* Josef Weinheber
* Peter Weiss
* Franz Werfel
* Christa Wolf
* Fritz Zorn (Fritz Angst)
* Stefan Zweig

Contemporary
writers|

* Zsuzsa Bánk
* Thomas Brussig
* Jenny Erpenbeck
* Rainald Goetz
* Durs Grünbein
* Peter Handke
* Elfriede Jelinek
* Reinhard Jirgl
* Wladimir Kaminer
* Daniel Kehlmann
* Alexander Kluge
* Christian Kracht
* Monika Maron
* Terézia Mora
* Herta Müller
* Emine Sevgi Özdamar
* Julya Rabinowich
* Rafik Schami
* Ingo Schulze
* Botho Strauß
* Yoko Tawada
* Uwe Timm
* Jan Wagner
* Martin Walser
* Peter Wawerzinek
* Wolf Wondratschek
* Feridun Zaimoğlu
* Juli Zeh

German-language
Nobel laureates|

* Theodor Mommsen
* Rudolf Christoph Eucken
* Paul Heyse
* Gerhart Hauptmann
* Carl Spitteler
* Thomas Mann
* Hermann Hesse
* Nelly Sachs
* Heinrich Böll
* Elias Canetti
* Günter Grass
* Elfriede Jelinek
* Herta Müller
* Peter Handke

German-language
literary awards|

* Ingeborg Bachmann Prize
* Georg Büchner Prize
* Sigmund Freud Prize
* Adelbert von Chamisso Prize
* Hans Fallada Prize
* Goethe Prize
* Heinrich Heine Prize
* Kleist Prize
* Leipzig Book Fair Prize
* Nelly Sachs Prize

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