Author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial, prophet of the modern predicament
A German-language writer of Austria-Hungary, a prophet of modernist literature. By day a minor clerk in an insurance office, by night he wrote nightmarish tales: a man wakes one morning transformed into an insect; a man is arrested and tried for no reason, never learning the charge. The world under his pen is absurd, cold, and beyond appeal, precisely foretelling the smallness and helplessness of the modern individual before the vast bureaucratic machine — "Kafkaesque" became the very word for this condition. Almost unknown in his lifetime, he willed his manuscripts burned; his friend, disobeying, preserved them.
The Metamorphosis opens: the salesman Gregor wakes one morning to find himself turned into a huge insect. Kafka does not explain why, only coolly writes how his family moves from terror to loathing and at last longs for him to die. With one absurd premise he speaks the truest of fears: how thin family love can wear once you are no longer useful.
Below are how modern works borrow or reinterpret this name or story — not the original material. The two differ, so keep them apart.