Imagine what life would be like if you woke up in the morning with a different body. Not just any body, either—that of “a kind of giant bug” (15). Would you go to work? How would you communicate with your family? What would happen next? These are the issues Franz Kafka explores in this novella.

Kafka, a German-speaking Jewish novelist, published Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) in 1915. Along with his other novels, Metamorphosis highlights the absurdity of life common in existentialist thought. The gears of bureaucracy mindlessly grind the common person to dust. What is the point of virtue in such a setting? Elements of surrealism abound. This style has become so familiar, it has spawned its own adjective: Kafkaesque.

Metamorphosis is strange—the sort of strange that will keep you thinking about the story long after you have re-shelved the book.

Kafka, Franz. Metamorphosis. London: Arcturus, 2018.