Kafka, Franz

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Kafka, Franz (1883–1924) German novelist, b. Czechoslovakia. He suffered from intense self-doubt, publishing only essays and short stories, such as Metamorphosis (1916), during his lifetime. Kafka requested that his friend Max Brod destroy his works after his death. Brod overrode his wishes and published the trilogy of unfinished novels for which Kafka is best known today: The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927). They are disturbing studies of the alienation of the individual in a bureaucratic and totalitarian society.

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