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Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka’s Life Was Almost as Strange as His Fiction
A writer who had written about a man waking up as an insect lived his life feeling like a stranger in every room, even the room where he was born and brought up.
The most disturbing sentence of The Metamorphosis is not the opening line. Gregor Samsa wakes up to see himself turned into a "monstrous vermin," but the first thing that comes to his mind is missing the train. His physical appearance is now beyond recognition, but he is controlled by the routine.
It is typical Kafka and also a biographical detail. The writer knew well enough how one can be broken by responsibilities that are so common that no one bothers to ask questions about them.
The Man Who Wrote at Night
Franz Kafka was born in Prague in 1883. He was part of a German-speaking family. The city where he lived spoke in Czech as the language. The Austro-Hungarian Empire controlled the area. So he was part of a group that was not the majority. He was a minority inside another minority. He never felt completely comfortable with any of the groups around him.
He studied to be a lawyer. He got his doctorate in 1906. From 1908 he worked at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute. It was a job. He did it well. He hated it. He…
