Books

He was very self critical so he refused to publish most of his work, but he was still published and acknowledged during his lifetime although not with the world fame he has now, other famous German speaking authors mention and acknowledge his work during the 20s. Also he died very young, so most of his work was unfinished.

Some argue that, after he wrote "The judgement" in just 8 hours one night, a fiery explosion of creativity and geniality, he was often disillusioned with the slow and exhausting progress most of his other work made.

A lot of his work was unpublished and unfinished until his friend Max Brod published it posthumously against his wishes.

That he died penniless can be described as an exaggeration, he was very successful in his daytime job, although he was not fond of it. But he never managed to earn a living as a writer, so much is true.

Will absolutely do, after writing this comment I pulled out Metamorphosis and read the first couple pages again and it's just so good. Like I said the societal observations are so sharp, I am German native and even more than a hundred years later it is still on point, everybody trying to bring a rational attitude in a otherwise completely absurd situation.

It reminds me a little of the German comedian Loriot, he also had a way of describing exactly that. There is a Loriot sketch where a man enters a bathroom in a hotel, to get a bath, just to find another man sitting in the bathtub. So he gets into the bathtub with him and they start to argue with each other about if they want to have water now and later about if the rubber ducky can also join in the tub, without ever really addressing that they are together in a bathtub. All the while they stay perfectly polite with each other, using each other's full names and titles (Herr Müller-Lüdenscheid! I insist that you water the duck now! - Herr Doktor Knöbel, my duck won't share the tub with you!). It is so absurd it brings me to tears laughing.