“When Gregor Samsa awoke from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into a monstrous insect.” With that iconic and unsettling opening line, Franz Kafka launches The Metamorphosis—a surreal, darkly comic tale of alienation and self-erasure. Gregor’s overnight transformation turns him into a grotesque outcast in his own home, as Kafka masterfully explores themes of guilt, isolation, and the crushing weight of societal expectations.
This Modern Library edition features Stanley Corngold’s acclaimed translation—widely regarded as the definitive English version—alongside seven insightful essays by literary giants such as Philip Roth, W. H. Auden, and Walter Benjamin. Also included is a new introduction by Corngold and essential background material that enriches our understanding of this haunting modern classic.
Editorial Reviews
“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
"The only stories published in Kafka's lifetime, this collection contains the best-known novellas and stories from one of the seminal writers of the 20th century. Each work is unique and spellbinding. You don't know what's going to happen and you can't put it down." —Jewish Book World
"Vibrant...preserves the comedy as well as the tragedy of Kafka’s text." —Times Literary Supplement
"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.” —The Wichita Eagle
About the Author
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was one of the most important writers of the twentieth century. His major novels include The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika.
Mark M. Anderson is Professor of Germanic Languages at Columbia University. He is the author of Kafka’s Clothes and the editor of Reading Kafka. He has written widely on literary modernism and has edited and translated contemporary Austrian writers Ingeborg Bachmann and Thomas Bernhard.
Susan Bernofsky is the acclaimed translator of Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and Jenny Erpenbeck, and the recipient of many awards, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and the Hermann Hesse Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation at Columbia University and lives in New York.
