I write literature in German that fuses realism with the fantastique: isolated protagonists caught in bizarre predicaments and incomprehensible bureaucratic powers. The Metamorphosis, The Trial and The Castle are my major works.
The person outside the work — what they're learning and tinkering with.
After seeing a Yiddish theatre troupe in October 1911 I immersed myself in Yiddish language and literature for six months. That learning became the inspiration for my first novel, The Man Who Disappeared.
At university in Prague I switched from chemistry to law, took German studies and art history on the side, read Plato and Flaubert in the original with Max Brod, and earned a Doctor of Law on 18 June 1906.
I read widely and critically — Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Gogol, Grillparzer and Kleist were my "true blood brothers" — and I judged even Goethe by what his work did to the German language of literature.
