Franz Kafka and the Word "Kafkaesque": A Legacy of Unease

Franz Kafka, the Czech-born writer of German-Jewish descent, has become one of the most enigmatic and influential figures in modern literature. Born in 1883 in Prague, Kafka lived a life as elusive and paradoxical as the fiction he left behind. Though he worked a mundane day job as an insurance clerk, his night hours yielded a body of work that would la…