The Metamorphosis (Bantam Classics)

When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning fromunsettling dreams, he found himself changed in hisbed into a monstrous vermin. With thisstartling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny firstsentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, TheMetamorphosis. It is the story of ayoung man who, transformed overnight into a giantbeetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace tohis family, an outsider in his own home, aquintessentially alienated man. A harrowing -- thoughabsurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings ofinadequecy, guilt, and isolation, TheMetamorphosis has taken its place as oneof the mosst widely read and influential works oftwentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, Kafka is important to us because his predicamentis the predicament of modern man.