The Metamorphosis
- Publisher : Bantam
- Publishing year : February 1972
- Binding : Paperback
- ISBN : 9780553213690
- Imprint : Bantam
- Age Group : Young Adult
- Language : English
“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrou ...
“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”
With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowing—though absurdly comic—meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction.
Franz Kafka (1883 - 1924) is a Jewish Czechoslovakian who wrote in German, and who ranks among the twentieth-century's most acclaimed writers. His works evoke anxiety, alienation and uncertainty in a world that is largely unfeeling and unfamiliar. He bequeathed his main body of work to long-time friend Max Brod, asking for it to be burned unread. Brod disobeyed Kafka's, whose work is now considered among the most original in Western literature.