Born: 3 July 1883 · Died: 3 June 1924 · Age at death: 40
How old was Franz Kafka when he died?
Franz Kafka died aged 40. He was born on 3 July 1883 and died on 3 June 1924.
Prague-born German-language writer whose unsettling works The Metamorphosis and The Trial inspired the word Kafkaesque
Did you know?He spent his professional career working in insurance and only wrote in his spare time during the evenings.
Quick facts
Date of birth3 July 1883
Date of death3 June 1924
Age at death40
Cause of deathLaryngeal tuberculosis, starvation
NationalityAustro-Hungarian
BirthplacePrague, Czech Republic
Occupationnovelist, fabulist, short story writer
Editor's Take:
Kafka's name has become an adjective, 'Kafkaesque', used for any situation that feels absurd, bureaucratic and quietly threatening. In The Metamorphosis a travelling salesman wakes to find himself transformed into a giant insect, and his family's reaction is as disturbing as the change itself. The Trial follows a man arrested for a crime no one will explain. Kafka published little in his lifetime and asked his friend Max Brod to burn his manuscripts after his death. Brod refused, and the world gained some of the most influential fiction of the twentieth century.
Key Milestones
1906: Earns a law doctorate in Prague
1908: Joins the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute
1912: Writes The Judgement and The Metamorphosis
1915: The Metamorphosis is published
1917: Diagnosed with tuberculosis
1925: The Trial is published after his death
Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-language Jewish writer and novelist from Prague.
