The Metamorphosis
Gregor Samsa, a traveling salesman who supports his parents and sister with a job he hates, wakes one morning from anxious dreams to find himself transformed in his bed into an enormous insect. He is on his back, his many small legs waving feebly, and his first concern is that he will be late for the office. The story that follows takes place almost entirely inside the Samsa flat: Gregor's father drives him back into his room with a newspaper and a cane, his mother faints at the sight of him, and his sister Grete tries at first to keep him fed and clean, then slowly turns away. As the family takes in lodgers to make ends meet and Gregor's body deteriorates, Franz Kafka's 1915 novella becomes a parable of work, dependency, and disgust, written in a deadpan voice that refuses to register the horror of its own premise and that has shaped a century of fiction about alienated bodies and ordinary cruelties.
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One ordinary morning, Prague cloth salesman Gregor Samsa wakes to find that he has turned into a hard-shelled insect the size of a man. Across three short sections, his manager comes for him, his father drives him back into his room, and his mother and sister Grete feed the thing in the bedroom.
No. The Metamorphosis is short (around 70 pages) and stylistically clear in most translations. The premise (a salesman wakes up as a giant insect) is famous, but the prose itself is accessible. Susan Bernofsky's recent Norton translation is widely recommended.
Yes. The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung) was published in 1915 and is in the public domain. The original German text is freely available; English translations vary in copyright depending on the translator.
The Metamorphosis is 88 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Metamorphosis takes most readers 1 to 2 hours to finish.
The Metamorphosis is a standalone novel by an unknown author, not part of a series.
The Metamorphosis is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
