FRANZ KAFKA was born in Prague in 1883 and spent the majority of his life there. He only published a few short stories during his lifetime, including The Metamorphosis, The Judgment, and The Stoker. He died before finishing any of his full-length novels in 1924. Kafka asked his longstanding friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all of his unpublished work at the end of his life. Such wishes were ignored by Brod.

MARK HARMAN is a Ph.D. holder. He earned his bachelor's degree from Yale University and has taught German and Irish literature at Oberlin and Dartmouth. He has edited and co-translated Robert Walser Rediscovered: Tales, Fairy-Tale Plays, and Critical Responses and translated Soul of the Age: Collected Letters of Hermann Hesse, 1891-1962, in addition to producing scholarly studies on Kafka and other modern authors. At the University of Pennsylvania, he teaches literature.