“We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”

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.