The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka | 9781599866147 | Paperback

"The Metamorphosis" (original German title: "Die Verwandlung") is a short novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a traveling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect.

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From the Publisher

Kafka’s survey of the insectile situation of young Jews in inner Bohemia can hardly be improved upon: ‘With their posterior legs they were still glued to their father’s Jewishness and with their wavering anterior legs they found no new ground.’ There is a sense in which Kafka’s Jewish question (‘What have I in common with Jews?’) has become everybody’s question, Jewish alienation the template for all our doubts. What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. We’re all insects, all Ungeziefer, now.”
—Zadie Smith

“Kafka engaged in no technical experiments whatsoever; without in any way changing the German language, he stripped it of its involved constructions until it became clear and simple, like everyday speech purified of slang and negligence. The common experience of Kafka’s readers is one of general and vague fascination, even in stories they fail to understand, a precise recollection of strange and seemingly absurd images and descriptions—until one day the hidden meaning reveals itself to them with the sudden evidence of a truth simple and incontestable.”
—Hannah Arendt

Richard Howard

This is the transforming text for you.

Times Literary Supplement

Vibrant . . . preserves the comedy as well as the tragedy of Kafka’s text.

The Wichita Eagle

Susan Bernofsky's new, exacting translation shows just how ingenious the structure of [The Metamorphosis] is, and just how difficult it is to render Kafka's German into English. She succeeds brilliantly, however, with a vivid fidelity to Kafka's vision, driving home the way he makes us at once sympathetic to his anti-hero, Gregor Samsa, and repulsed by him.””

Slate

Distinguishes itself from previous translations in its first sentence.

The Metamorphosis

Paperback

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