Franz Kafka was born in Prague and was the son of a wealthy self-made Czech-Jewish merchant. After studying philology and medicine for a few years, he turned to law. He worked as a clerk in a social insurance company in Prague.

His failed love stories, his difficult relationship with his authoritarian father, his impeccable intellectual honesty, and his almost pathological sensitivity undermined his health. The "years of hunger" in Berlin after 1918 dealt him the final blow. He died there near his last companion, Dora Diamant.

He wrote novels (including the unfinished The Trial, The Castle, America, which were published after his death by his friend Max Brod, whom he had asked to burn them) and short stories (among which The Metamorphosis stands out). Today, his Notebooks and Letters (Letter to His Father, Letters to Milena, etc.) have also been published.

"Someone must have slandered Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested." Thus begins the always relevant Trial.