Q 01/05

Which empire ruled Prague when Kafka was born there in 1883?

A) Austria-Hungary

B) Imperial Germany

C) Imperial Russia

D) Ottoman Turkey

Answer · why

A) Austria-Hungary

Austria-Hungary. Kafka was born an Austrian subject and became a citizen of the new Czechoslovakia only when the empire collapsed in 1918.

Q 02/05

In which language did Kafka write?

A) Czech

B) German

C) Yiddish

D) Hebrew

Answer · why

B) German

German. It was the language of advancement in the Prague of his day, so the family mostly spoke it at home and sent Franz only to German schools.

Q 03/05

In The Metamorphosis, what does the travelling salesman wake up to find he has become?

A) A stray dog

B) A stone statue

C) A monstrous vermin

D) A giant bird

Answer · why

C) A monstrous vermin

A monstrous vermin. Kafka's original word names no particular creature, and he told his publisher that the insect itself was not to be drawn on the co...

Q 04/05

What is the name of the transformed protagonist of The Metamorphosis?

A) Josef K.

B) Georg Bendemann

C) Karl Rossmann

D) Gregor Samsa

Answer · why

D) Gregor Samsa

Gregor Samsa. Haruki Murakami turned the story inside out in Samsa in Love, whose hero wakes to find that he has become Gregor Samsa.

Q 05/05

The word Kafkaesque is most often used to describe what kind of situation?

A) A doomed, forbidden romance

B) A nightmarish, senseless bureaucracy

C) A sudden, undeserved fortune

D) A long, heroic rebellion

Answer · why

B) A nightmarish, senseless bureaucracy

A nightmarish, senseless bureaucracy. The word is now used so freely, for any odd mishap, that Kafka scholars complain it has been watered down.