Jump to ratings and reviews
Rate this book

Rejection

Rate this book

Unknown Binding

1 person is currently reading
15 people want to read

About the author

Franz Kafka

3,215 books38.4k followers
Prague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as " The Metamorphosis " (1916), and posthumously published novels, including The Trial (1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world.

Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature.

His stories include "The Metamorphosis" (1912) and " In the Penal Colony " (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).

Despite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors.

Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. This study offered a range of career possibilities, which pleased his father, and required a longer course of study that gave Kafka time to take classes in German studies and art history. At the university, he joined a student club, named Lese- und Redehalle der Deutschen Studenten, which organized literary events, readings, and other activities. In the end of his first year of studies, he met Max Brod, a close friend of his throughout his life, together with the journalist Felix Weltsch, who also studied law. Kafka obtained the degree of doctor of law on 18 June 1906 and performed an obligatory year of unpaid service as law clerk for the civil and criminal courts.

Writing of Kafka attracted little attention before his death. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories and never finished any of his novels except the very short "The Metamorphosis." Kafka wrote to Max Brod, his friend and literary executor: "Dearest Max, my last request: Everything I leave behind me ... in the way of diaries, manuscripts, letters (my own and others'), sketches, and so on, [is] to be burned unread." Brod told Kafka that he intended not to honor these wishes, but Kafka, so knowing, nevertheless consequently gave these directions specifically to Brod, who, so reasoning, overrode these wishes. Brod in fact oversaw the publication of most of work of Kafka in his possession; these works quickly began to attract attention and high critical regard.

Max Brod encountered significant difficulty in compiling notebooks of Kafka into any chronological order as Kafka started writing in the middle of notebooks, from the last towards the first, et cetera.

Kafka wrote all his published works in German except several letters in Czech to Milena Jesenská.

Ratings & Reviews

What do you think?
Rate this book

Friends & Following

Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!

Community Reviews

5 stars
16 (21%)
4 stars
16 (21%)
3 stars
25 (34%)
2 stars
13 (17%)
1 star
3 (4%)
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Profile Image for Sama Salem.
78 reviews3 followers
December 11, 2023
“and yet you smile— inviting mortal danger— from time to time”
Profile Image for ↟° IRIS ⇞↟⇞.
66 reviews1 follower
Read
July 5, 2023
*
✦ The girl speaks,"You're not some duke with a sonorous name, nor are you an American with broad chest and native stature, with leveled, set eyes, of wind-burned skin from the harsh prairie air and rivers flowing through them; you did not travel to large lakes and sail on about them, as far as a lake resting somewhere unbeknownst to me. So, please, why should I, a beautiful girl, walk with you?"
Profile Image for Nagwa Nasr.
110 reviews6 followers
December 4, 2023
Guys are so alike and trivial and all of them have a grandeur complex! Also, this has reminded me of "Saye3 Bahr", when Ahmed Helmy was rejected by the love of his life.
Profile Image for sheza.
27 reviews2 followers
Read
June 23, 2024
I just wonder what might gone through his mind to have written this?!
Profile Image for Pari  shaikh .
30 reviews
December 26, 2025
a satire way of thinking that also represents the morden dating life and how people assume things, that are of superficial and dehumanizing
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews

Can't find what you're looking for?

Get help and learn more about the design.