Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer based in Prague, who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature.
The poet W. H. Auden called Kafka "the Dante of the twentieth century". The novelist Vladimir Nabokov placed him among the greatest writers of the 20th century. Gabriel García Márquez noted the reading of Kafka's The Metamorphosis showed him "that it was possible to write in a different way". Others, such as Thomas Mann, see Kafka's work as allegorical: a quest, metaphysical in nature, for God
In this SDG, we will start with reading Kafka’s Letter to his Father and then Dostoevsky’s Notes from The Underground in order to start getting to know him and keep Dostoevsky in mind who heavily influenced him - Kafka called him his blood relative. We will then dive in reading his work starting with Metamorphosis while comparing and discussing similarities and influences and analyzing and trying to understand his role in existentialism and absurdism of life.
