Franz Kafka (1883–1924)

Kafka worked as an insurance clerk in Prague, wrote mostly at night, published little during his lifetime, and asked his friend Max Brod to burn everything after he died. Brod didn't. What survived are some of the strangest, most prescient works in modern literature. The Trial. The Castle. The Metamorphosis. His characters inhabit systems that refuse to explain themselves. The comedy is in how recognizable it all feels, a hundred years later.

Concepts

absurd, agency, alienation, authenticity, conformity, escape, freedom, loneliness, meaning, oppression, praxis

Notable Works

Resonant Voices

Albert Camus, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rollo May, Hannah Arendt

Quotes (6)

“A cage went in search of a bird.” — The Zuerau Aphorisms (1917)
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.” — Letters to Oskar Pollak (1904)
“There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it can...” — The Zuerau Aphorisms (1917)
“I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happeni...” — The Metamorphosis (1915)
“In the struggle between yourself and the world, second the world.” — The Zuerau Aphorisms (1917)
“Beyond a certain point there is no return. This point has to be reached.” — The Trial (1925)