The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka

(Paperback, 368 pages, first published in 1915)

The most well-regarded English translation of Kafka's seminal masterpiece - along with six critical essays by writers including Philip Roth, W.H. Auden and Walter Benjamin, background and context material, and a new Introduction by Stanley Corngold - all together in a gorgeous new trade paperback edition.

"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—hough 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. As W. H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man."

Recommended Age: 15+