Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a Czech novelist and short story writer whose literary output was almost entirely in German. Few of his stories were published in his lifetime, and none attracted much attention from critics or the public. Upon his death from tuberculosis, Kafka ordered his literary executor Max Brod to burn his manuscripts unread, but Brod ignored the order. His fiction frequently deals with persecution, alienation, and intrusions of the fantastic upon ordinary life.