I've never really felt like Kafka seems to have and I read a lot, mostly novels. For what it's worth, I don't love Kafka's novels: I think he wanted them burned

I've never really felt like Kafka seems to have and I read a lot, mostly novels. For what it's worth, I don't love Kafka's novels: I think he wanted them burned for a reason -- they're meandering failures. Very clever but they don't go anywhere. His short stories, though, are excellent. Off the top of my head, the most moving books I've read are The First Circle, any long Dostoevsky novel, The Master and Margarita, The Tartar Steppe, any Elena Ferrante, any Cormac McCarthy, some Murakami (Ryu and Haruki), Gene Wolf (The Book of the New Sun), 2666, parts of Moby Dick, any Alice Munro. All well known "good books".