Kafka has a turbulent relationship with his on and off fiancée Felice Bauer; after getting to know each other mainly through letters, their engagement is broken off, renewed, only to be broken off again.

Max Brod is a well-connected writer and editor who saves his close friend's work from oblivion by breaking his promise to burn all unpublished papers after Franz's death; Max carries them to safety on the last train out of Prague at the onset of WW2.

Kafka has a brief but intense relationship with the charismatic writer Milena Jesenská, who translated his work from German to Czech; he revealed his most intimate self to her and entrusted her with the safekeeping of his diaries.

Kafka has a last great love, Dora Dymant, whom he meets in a Baltic sea resort which his imagination turns into the mythical village of his final novel "The Castle"; after moving in together to a flat in Berlin, Dora cares for Kafka until the end.

Kafka has an ambiguous relationship with his workplace; a brilliant insurance lawyer, Kafka is highly respected by his colleagues who, at the height of WW1, save his life by preventing him from enlisting.

Kafka's father --to whom Franz will address a merciless indictment of over 100 pages, never sent in his lifetime but posthumously published as "Letter to the Father"-- is strict and domineering.