The Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)

The Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)

?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. As W.H. Auden wrote, ?Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.? Review ?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