Biographie de Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a Czech-born German-speaking insurance clerk who despised his job, preferring to spend his time writing. Nevertheless, Kafka published little during his lifetime, and ordered his closest friend, Max Brod, to burn the mass of unpublished manuscripts – now familiar to us as some of the most influential novels and short stories of the twentieth century – after his death. Kafka's novels, all available in Penguin Classics, include The Trial, The Castle and Amerika.
Michael Hofmann is a poet and translator from the German. For Penguin he has translated works by Franz Kafka, Hans Fallada, Ernst Jünger, Irmgard Keun and Jakob Wassermann.