Every writer is different. Each has his or her own way of working, a method for getting words down on paper. Some are procrastinators, some are methodical, some write in between juggling a daytime job and caring for a family.

Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was born into a middle-class, German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Bohemia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was a writer of novels and short stories and is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which combines elements of realism and fantasy typically features a lone protagonist faced with a bizarre or surrealistic predicament. His work explores the themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity.

Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote hundreds of letters to family and close friends, including his father, with whom he had a strained and formal relationship.