卡夫卡的生平,概括一点的,最好是英文的

Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Czech-born German-speaking writer whose posthumously published novels express the alienation of 20th century man.Kafka's nightmares of dehumanization,bureaucratic labyrinths,and totalitarian society have much in common with the works of George Orwell (Nineteen Eighty-Four,1949; Animal Farm,1955).Jorge Luis Borges has noted,that Zeno's paradox against motion and the arrow and Achilles are the first Kafkaesque characters in literature.Kafka's ill health was also an important biographical factor behind the fear of physical and mental collapse dramatized in such short stories as "Ein Hungerkünstler" (1924) and "Die Verwandlung" (1915,The Metamorphosis).
Franz Kafka was born in Prague,now in the Czech Republic but then part of Austria.His father was Hermann Kafka,an owner of a large dry goods establishment,and mother Julie (Löwy) Kafka,who belonged to one of the leading families in the German-speaking,German-cultured Jewish circles of Prague.
Kafka grew up in an atmosphere of familial tensions and social rejection that he experienced as a member of Prague's Jewish minority.His attitude to his Jewish heritage was ambivalent.
Kafka was educated at the German National and Civic Elementary School and the German National Humanistic Gymnasium.In 1901 he entered Ferdinand-Karls University,where he studied law and received a doctorate in 1906.During these years Kafka became a member of a circle of intellectuals,which included Franz Werfel,Oskar Baum and Max Brod,whom Kafka met in 1902.About 1904 Kafka began writing,making reports on industrial accidents and health hazard in the office by day,and writing stories by night.
Until his retirement Kafka worked at the insurance business (1907-23),first at an administrative position in a Prague branch of an Italian insurance company and then at the Workmen's Accident Insurance Institute of Prague.His work was highly valued at the company and during World War I his supervisors arranged for his draft deferment.
Kafka retired in 1922 on a pension.
As a Jew Kafka was isolated from the German community in Prague,but his friend and biographer Max Brod (1884-1968) did his best to promote Kafka's career as a writer.However,Kafka published only a few stories.During the last two and half years of his life Kafka finished some of his best works.Among them were "Ein Hungerkünstler",in which the hero is left to die unwatched in his unusual profession,and "Josephine,die Sängerin",in which the central character is a mouse,who sings - or squeaks.Kafka requested before his death that all his manuscripts should be destroyed.This was disregarded by Max Brod,who published the unfinished novels The Trial,The Castle,and America,classics of modern fiction.