Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883 – June 3, 1924) was an author best known for his works The Metamorphosis, The Trial, The Castle, and In the Penal Colony.  He was born the eldest of six into a German-speaking Jewish family in the retail business in Prague, then the capitol of Bohemia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, later Czechoslovakia. He wrote in German in a culture that was dominantly Czech.  He had a difficult relationship with his father, who was self-centered and overbearing, and as his mother worked in the family business he was raised with his sisters by governesses. He was educated as a lawyer and worked for an insurance company while writing in his spare time.

Few of Kafka’s works were published during his lifetime; his novels The Trial and Amerika were unfinished at his death and were published posthumously by his friend Max Brod. Kafka’s work is fraught with an angst that derives from the by-products of the rapidly modernizing world: profound alienation, physical and psychological brutality, bureaucratic labyrinths, and mysterious transmogrifications. As perhaps the first to master these themes, he is universally esteemed as one of the most influential authors of the 20th century.