The Originals : The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka (1883-1924), a German-speaking Bohemian Jewish novelist, was one of the foremost writers of the 20th century. His novels The Judgement (1913) and The Trial (1925), cemented his reputation as a writer. Kafka had a concise style of writing and the themes of despair and alienation were recurrent in his works. He was also a writer of fine short stories that were existentialist in tone. Although he received little literary attention while he was alive, Kafka became an important figure of German literature when his close friend and literary executor, Max Brod, refused to destroy his novels, diaries and letters upon his death, as was instructed by Kafka. The term Kafkaesque derives from Kafka's name and denotes the nightmarish, absurd and oppressive situations that the protagonists often face in his works. Kafka died of tuberculosis, aged 40.