The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka´s Metamorphosis - arguably the greatest, most famous and most unnerving short work of literary fiction ever written - is a hundred years old in 2015. This centenary edition offers the first complete English translation of Kafka´s text (by A. L. Lloyd from 1937) plus a richly detailed new introduction to the story by novelist Richard T. Kelly, describing its genesis and the life of its creator. In The Metamorphosis´ unforgettable opening sentence we meet travelling salesman Gregor Samsa - on a rare overnight stay in the apartment he shares with his family, paid for by his ceaseless labour - who awakes one morning ´from a troubled dream´ to find himself ´changed in his bed to some kind of monstrous vermin´. ´There is nothing which The Metamorphosis could be surpassed by - one of the few great, perfect poetic works of this century.´ Elias Canetti ´My greatest masterpieces of twentieth-century prose are, in this order, Joyce´s Ulysses, Kafka´s [Metamorphosis], Bely´s Petersburg and the first half of Proust´s fairy tale In Search of Lost Time.´ Vladimir Nabokov