Wikipedia:
Franz Kafka was a German-language Jewish Czech writer and novelist born in Prague. Widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature, his works fuse elements of realism and the fantastique, and typically feature isolated protagonists in bizarre or surreal predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. Kafka was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His family were German-speaking middle-class Ashkenazi Jews.
My awareness and admiration of Kafka was born in my early teens when I was ass-deep into Sci-Fi. and came across his incredible, novella, The Metamorphosis. Holy ****! It scared the **** out of me and I was irrevocably hooked!
Kafka was born on July 3, 1883. He had a lifelong suspicion that people found him mentally and physically repulsive. But those who met him found him to possess a quiet and cool demeanor, obvious intelligence and a dry sense of humor; they also found him handsome, although of austere appearance. He had the ability to describe a situation realistically with precise details.
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Franz Kafka - 1906
photographer unknown
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Kafka at about ten with his sisters
Valli (left) and Elli (center)
Kafka
never married, was supposedly "tortured" by sexual desire and
filled with a fear of "sexual failure". He visited brothels for most of
his adult life, and his collection of erotica and pornographic
photographs demonstrates a connoisseur's range of interest in the
genre. In addition, he had close relationships with several women during
his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer, who worked in Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company.
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Felice Bauer & Franz Kafka - 1917
photographer unknown
Kafka drew and sketched extensively. His interest in art grew from 1901
to 1906. He "practiced drawing, took drawing classes, attended art
history lectures, and sought to establish a connection to Prague's
artistic circles". According to Max Brod, Kafka "was even more indifferent, or perhaps
better, more hostile to his drawings than he was to his literary
production". As he did with his writings, Kafka asked in his testament for his drawings to be destroyed. Brod preserved all of Kafka's drawings that Kafka gave him or that he
could rescue from the wastebasket or otherwise, but "[a]nything that I
didn't rescue was destroyed". Until May 2021, only about 40 of his drawings were known. In 2022, Yale University Press published Franz Kafka: The Drawings. The book brought to light about 150 sketches by Kafka.
Kafka's laryngeal tuberculosis worsened and in March 1924 he returned from Berlin to Prague, where members of his family, principally his sister Ottla, as well as
Dora Diamant, took care of him. He went to Hugo Hoffmann's sanatorium in
Kierling just outside Vienna for treatment on 10 April, and died there on 3 June 1924.
The cause of death was starvation: the condition of Kafka's throat made eating too painful for
him, and since parenteral nutrition had not yet been developed, there was no way to feed him.
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David Černý - kinetic Head of Franz Kafka - 2014
"The tremendous world I have inside my head, but how to free myself and free it without being torn to pieces. And a thousand times rather be torn to pieces than retain it in me or bury it. That, indeed, is why I am here, that is quite clear to me." ~ Franz Kafka
Kafka’s Genius Philosophy (33 mins., 50 secs.)
