“During last night’s insomnia, as these thoughts came and went between my aching temples, I realised once again, what I had almost forgotten in this recent period of relative calm, that I tread a terribly tenuous, indeed almost non-existent soil spread over a pit full of shadows, whence the powers of darkness emerge at will to destroy my life…”

German-language Jewish writer from Prague

Franz Kafka was a German-language Jewish writer from Prague. He is a major figure of 20th-century literature, known for works that blend realism with the fantastic and for the word Kafkaesque, now used for situations marked by confusion, absurdity, and impersonal power. His best-known books include the novella The Metamorphosis and the novels The Trial and The Castle. He is also remembered for brief fables and aphorisms that often mix comic touches with the darker concerns of his longer fiction, and his writing has influenced many fields beyond literature.