Kafka... Part Two

Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883 - June 3, 1924)A Czech writer who wrote in German, he is one of the greatest writers of the Expressionist movement and a pioneer of nightmarish literature. Franz Kafka is not only a prominent figure in the history of German literature, but also in the history of humanity; he is one of the greatest German-speaking writers of the novel and short story. Kafka studied chemistry, law, and literature at Charles University in Prague. Born into a liberal Jewish family, he had two brothers and three sisters. German was his native language, and he also spoke Czech and French. He did not speak Hebrew, despite being Jewish. He learned modern Hebrew from the teacher Modrichai Langer. He worked as a clerk for an insurance company until his early retirement in 1922. He spent his free time writing, which he considered the purpose of his life. He published a small portion of his work during his lifetime, but most of it was published posthumously by his close friend Max Brod, who refused Kafka's request to destroy all his writings. His life was filled with sorrow and suffering, including his relationship with his father. Kafka was a sensitive intellectual who fell under the tyrannical and domineering rule of his father, a situation that profoundly affected his childhood and is reflected in a long letter he wrote entitled "e;Letter to My Father."e; The effects of this relationship are particularly evident in his novel "e;The Trial,"e; where the young man accepts his father's death sentence and drowns. In 1917, Kafka contracted tuberculosis and spent part of his life moving between sanatoriums in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany, until his death in Austria in 1924. Despite his early death at the age of forty, his melancholic literature and writings about humanity's search for God and justice left an indelible mark on world literature, in addition to the suffering he expressed in his writings. This book is part of a project to translate Kafka's complete works. This project began in 2014 to commemorate the ninetieth anniversary of his death. The works include retranslations of Kafka's most important writings, as well as stories published for the first time in Arabic.