Franz Kafka
Telling of a law no one can reach.
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Jewish writer from Prague who spent most of his working life as a legal official at a workers’ accident insurance institute and wrote chiefly at night. His stories, novels, diaries and letters, most of them published after his death, depict individuals facing courts, offices and families whose rules remain opaque, and they have become a touchstone for philosophical reflection on guilt, authority and estrangement.
How can one live before a law one can neither see nor understand?
Biography
Franz Kafka was a German-speaking Jewish writer from Prague who spent most of his working life as a legal official at a workers’ accident insurance institute and wrote chiefly at night. His stories, novels, diaries and letters, most of them published after his death, depict individuals facing courts, offices and families whose rules remain opaque, and they have become a touchstone for philosophical reflection on guilt, authority and estrangement.
02 /Philosophy
In the parable told in The Trial, a man from the country waits all his life before a door of the Law that, he learns at the end, was meant only for him. Kafka supplies no key, and the chaplain’s commentary multiplies readings rather than closing them.
03 /Reading guides
Original introductions to enter the works, discover their central questions and take the reflection further.
04 /Bibliography
Works, testimonies and further readings are distinguished. Dates refer to composition or first publication, as specified in each entry.
A first reading.
A family facing transformation
Follow body, work and care in The Metamorphosis, from Gregor’s awakening to the family’s outing after his death.
The MetamorphosisReading the court and its parable
Examine the arrest, the intermediaries and the doorkeeper parable in The Trial, keeping its unfinished state in view.
The TrialApproaching the unreachable castle
Trace K.’s attempts to reach the castle authorities and the village life that is organised around them.
The Castle