Franz Kafka
Born July 3, 1883
Died June 3, 1924, aged 40.
High of his Life: Franz Kafka is widely considered to be one of the 20th century’s greatest writers. His work set the stage for later literary movements such as magic realism, existentialism and modernism, as well as absurdism and surrealism. The word Kafkaesque, meaning marked by surreal distortion and a sense of impending danger, is today part of the English language.
Low of his Life: Kafka’s work didn’t get much attention until after he died. Which is ironic considering that his last wish was that all of his writings be destroyed. The Metamorphosis was the only finished novel-length work he left behind and his other masterpieces, The Trial and The Castle, remain unfinished. He only published a handful of short stories while he was alive. He died young of tuberculosis and probably starved to death due to his throat pain at the end of his life. He never had a good relationship with his father, as exemplified in his “Letter to His Father” (1919) where he wrote: “My writing was all about you; all I did there, after all, was to bemoan what I could not bemoan upon your breast.” He viewed himself as weak(although he seemingly had many friends, especially women) yet his neurosis also affected his sexuality; he never married and had a few, likely unconsummated love affairs that wound up with him breaking it all off.
Who Sees Him as a Hero: Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Mann, Milan Kundera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Salman Rushdie, Federico Fellini, and pretty much every writer born after 1945.
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