Franz Kafka rotating sculpture in Prague, Czech Republic

Walking down the streets of Prague, I couldn’t help but marvel at the colourful buildings dotting the city. It’s actually the first thing you notice while driving down into the city from Vaclav Havel airport.

Buildings in Prague are mostly in shades of Lilac, champagne, light blue, baby pink, light green and cream white and I found this quite lovely and outstanding. Among the key things that caught my eye in Prague is this rotating sculpture with a face located outside Quadrio shopping centre.

I was certain that the face was one of the political rulers in Czech Republic and to my surprise, the sculptured head is that of Bohemian German-language writer Franz Kafka.

The kinetic sculpture is 11 metres tall and made of 42 rotating panels.

Colourful buildings in Prague

Coming from a country that has our streets and monuments largely named after popular politicians, it was indeed amazing to see an author getting the spotlight and to learn of his great contributions in literature. I’m eager to read one of his books now! perhaps The Castle, to begin with, now that Prague is famed for it’s castles and is reportedly the city with the highest number of castles, in Europe. (over 2000).

As I came to learn,  Franz Kafka was a novelist and short-story writer who is widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. He was born near the Old Town Square in Prague, a historic square in Prague’s capital of the Czech Republic.

His best-known works include the novella, The Metamorphosis and novels, The Trial and The Castle. Kafka’s writings became famous in German-speaking countries after World War II, influencing their literature, and its influence spread elsewhere in the world in the 1960s.

Kafka, a trained lawyer,  was born into a middle-class German-speaking Czech Jewish family in Prague, the capital of the Kingdom of Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (today the capital of the Czech Republic).

Franz Kafka died from tuberculosis in 1924 at the age of 40 and as is evident, his legacy lives on!