The children were largely reared by a series of governesses and servants. Franz's mother helped to manage her husband's business and worked in it as many as 12 hours a day. On business days, both parents were absent from the home. He had two younger brothers: Georg and Heinrich, who died at the ages of fifteen months and seven months, respectively, before Franz was seven and three younger sisters, Gabriele ("Ellie") (1889–1944), Valerie ("Valli") (1890–1944) and Ottilie ("Ottla") (1892–1943). Kafka's mother, Julie (1856–1934), was the daughter of Jakob Lowy, a prosperous brewer in Podebrady, and was better educated than her husband.įranz was the eldest of six children. After working as a traveling sales representative, he established himself as an independent retailer of men's and women's fancy goods and accessories, employing up to 15 people and using a jackdaw (kavka in Czech) as his business logo. His father, Hermann Kafka (1852–1931), was described as a "huge, selfish, overbearing businessman" and by Kafka himself as "a true Kafka in strength, health, appetite, loudness of voice, eloquence, self-satisfaction, worldly dominance, endurance, presence of mind, knowledge of human nature." Hermann was the fourth child of Jacob Kafka, a shochet or ritual slaughterer, and came to Prague from Osek, a Czech-speaking Jewish village near Písek in southern Bohemia. Most of Kafka's writing, including the large body of his unfinished work, was published posthumously.įranz Kafka was born into a middle-class Ashkenazi Jewish family in Prague (now the Czech Republic).
The term "Kafkaesque" has become part of the English language. Contemporary critics and academics, including Vladimir Nabokov, regard Kafka as one of the best writers of the 20th century. ( From the Schocken-Random House edition.)įranz Kafka was an influential German-language author of novels and short stories. In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information.
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