“I am constantly trying to communicate something incommunicable, to explain something inexplicable, to tell about something I only feel in my bones and which can only be experienced in those bones. Basically it is nothing other than this fear we have so often talked about, but fear spread to everything, fear of the greatest as of the smallest, fear, paralyzing fear of pronouncing a word, although this fear may not only be fear but also a longing for something greater than all that is fearful.”

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.