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50 free Franz Kafka trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Franz Kafka spent his days assessing industrial accidents for a Prague insurance institute and his nights writing stories he mostly wanted burned. He finished none of his novels, published a handful of slim collections, died of tuberculosis at 40 and became one of the defining writers of the century only because his friend Max Brod refused to light the match. These 50 questions cover the life and the afterlife: the German-speaking Jewish family and the jackdaw on the shop sign, the 100-page letter to his father, the switch from chemistry to law, the bread job and the asbestos factory, Felice Bauer and the night he wrote The Judgment, Milena and Dora, the Zürau aphorisms, Gregor Samsa's vermin, Josef K. and the land surveyor, the title Brod invented for Amerika, the suitcases carried to Palestine, the Gestapo seizure, the $2 million manuscript and the Israeli Supreme Court. Easy questions stick to the famous books and the word Kafkaesque; the expert tier asks about Kinský Palace, Brotberuf and the red carnation. Every answer is cited to a page we checked, with a short explanation so you learn something even when you miss. Play it solo or print it for a book-club night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which city was Franz Kafka born?
Prague
Prague was then the capital of Bohemia within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
Q 02In which language did Kafka write?
German
He also spoke Czech, with good grades at school, but never considered himself fluent.
Q 03In The Metamorphosis, what does the travelling salesman wake up to find he has become?
A monstrous vermin
The German word Ungeziefer is deliberately vague; Kafka never named a specific creature.
Q 04What is the name of the transformed protagonist of The Metamorphosis?
Gregor Samsa
Haruki Murakami's story Samsa in Love reverses the premise.
Q 05Which adjective derived from Kafka's name describes nightmarish bureaucratic situations?
Kafkaesque
Scholars say the term is now so ubiquitous it is often misused.
Q 06Which novel follows a man arrested and prosecuted without ever learning his crime?
The Trial
Kafka began it in 1914 and finished the final chapter but never the whole book.
Q 07What is the profession of K., the protagonist of The Castle?
Land surveyor
Kafka planned the novel in 1914 but did not start writing it until 1922.
Q 08Who was Kafka's friend and literary executor who refused to burn his manuscripts?
Max Brod
Brod said Kafka should have appointed another executor if he really wanted them destroyed.
Q 09What did Kafka ask Brod to do with his diaries, manuscripts and letters?
Burn them unread
Brod instead published the novels and collected works between 1925 and 1935.
Q 10What disease killed Kafka in 1924?
Tuberculosis
He was 40; his throat made eating so painful that he effectively starved.
Q 11What story was Kafka editing on his deathbed?
A Hunger Artist
Grimly, it concerns a man whose craft is starving himself for long periods.
Q 12What did Kafka's father use as the logo for his haberdashery business?
A jackdaw
Kavka is Czech for jackdaw, and is pronounced like the family name.
Q 13How long is Kafka's Letter to His Father?
More than 100 pages
He complained of his father's authoritarian and demanding character; it was never delivered.
What happened to Kafka's three sisters?
Q 21Which kind of performing troupe fascinated Kafka from October 1911?
Yiddish players
It sparked six months of immersion in Yiddish literature and his exploration of Judaism.
Q 22Who was Felice Bauer?
The woman Kafka was twice engaged to
She worked in Berlin for a dictaphone company; his letters to her survive, hers do not.
Q 23Which story did Kafka write in a single night in September 1912?
The Judgment
He dedicated it to Felice Bauer and called writing it a complete opening of body and soul.
They were murdered in the Holocaust
Elli, Valli and Ottla are commemorated on a plaque at the family grave in Prague.
Q 15Which of his sisters was Kafka's favourite?
Ottla
He stayed on the farm she worked at in Zürau after his tuberculosis diagnosis.
Q 16What did Kafka study at university after two weeks of chemistry?
Law
The choice pleased his father and offered a range of career possibilities.
Q 17What degree was Kafka awarded in June 1906?
Doctor of Law
He then spent an obligatory unpaid year as a clerk in the civil and criminal courts.
Q 18Where did Kafka work from 1908 until he was pensioned off in 1918?
The Worker's Accident Insurance Institute
He investigated industrial injuries such as lost fingers and wrote the institute's annual reports.
Q 19What word did Kafka's father use for his son's insurance job?
Brotberuf (bread job)
Kafka usually finished work at 2 p.m., leaving the afternoons for writing.
Q 20Kafka became a partner in his home city's first factory making what?
Asbestos
He resented how the business ate into his writing time.
Q 24Which Czech journalist did Kafka have an intense relationship with from 1920?
Milena Jesenská
His letters to her were published as Briefe an Milena.
Q 25Who was Kafka's last companion, with whom he lived in Berlin in 1923-24?
Dora Diamant
The 25-year-old kindergarten teacher reignited his interest in the Talmud.
Q 26Why did Kafka's father object to his engagement to Julie Wohryzek?
Her Zionist beliefs
The couple rented a flat and set a date, but the wedding never happened.
Q 27Where did Kafka write the 109 numbered aphorisms later published as the Zürau Aphorisms?
On a farm in a Bohemian village
He called the months at Zürau perhaps the best period of his life.
Q 28Kafka described writing as a form of what?
Prayer
He was highly sensitive to noise and wanted absolute quiet to work.
Q 29Which of these describes Kafka's diet and drinking?
Vegetarian teetotaller
He was also an accomplished rider, swimmer and rower.
Q 30What did Kafka reportedly wear to school to show his socialist sympathies?
A red carnation
His classmate Hugo Bergmann became a Zionist in the same year, 1898.