Franz Kafka was born on July 3, 1883 in the Jewish ghetto of Prague. Although Kafka's parents were comfortably middle-class, Jewish people in Prague were doubly outsiders because they spoke German—the official language of the Hapsburg Empire—in a Czech city, yet they were considered neither Germans nor Czechs. Moreover, as an "assimilated" non-believer, Kafka was an outsider even in the Jewish community.
Partly under his father's influence and partly because he did not believe in making a profession out of writing, Kafka took a law degree (during which time he met Max Brod, the friend who would change the course of his literary future) and became a clerk for an accident insurance office....
