Contrary to popular belief, Kafka was not half-man, half-bug. Nor did he have an airport named after him.

He actually had a pretty quiet (and pretty miserable) life. Kafka was a German Jew living in Czechoslovakia. Jews and Germans were not popular among the Czechs—meaning Kafka was doubly disliked.

Apart from these issues of race and class, Kafka did not even feel that he belonged in his own family. His father especially did not understand or appreciate Kafka's artistic temperament. It's no shocker, really, that Kafka liked writing about the alienation of the modern man.

The Metamorphosis

The fact that Kafka did his writing in isolation (and didn't publish most of it during his lifetime) probably helped to shape his work into what it is: a strange and sometimes darkly funny amalgamation of parable, Surrealistic interior narrative, and social commentary.

This short novel, in which a man turns into a disgusting bug, is totally all of these things.

"A Hunger Artist"

Here's another strange parable in which a man starves himself to death in public as a sort of artistic performance. What—did you expect something normal from Kafka? Pssshhh.

"In the Penal Colony"

Maybe because his life was so famously constrained—Kafka worked as a lawyer during the day and was free to write only at night—he wrote more than once about the subject of prisons and punishment.

This dystopian story examines in graphic detail the horrific torture of a prisoner in an unnamed state. Yeah, Shmoopers: if you want uplifting do not turn to Kafka.

Chew on this:

One of the most interesting things about Kafka's work is that, like other Modernist texts, it can be read in many ways. The language itself is simple enough, but the works suggest many different meanings and ideas. How does this relate to the idea of the unconscious?

Kafka is a totally unique writer. But it he following Pound's advice to "Make it New"? Why or why not?