Franz Kafka

Kafka grew up in a middle class family in Prague, Czech Republic. His father was a domineering tyrant who frequently beat the young Franz. Kafka studied to be a lawyer, but after graduation started working at an insurance company in Prague, where he would remain for the rest of his life. In his spare time, Kafka wrote short stories and novels, though few were published in his life, in part due to his being a Jew in an anti-Semitic society. Some of Kafka’s greatest works included The Metamorphosis, The Trial, and The Castle, though the latter two were not published until the years after Kafka’s death of tuberculosis in 1924 at age 40.