First published in German in 1915, Franz Kafka’s Die Verwandlung — translated as Metamorphosis or The Transformation — opens with one of the most famous sentences in modern literature: traveling salesman Gregor Samsa wakes one morning to find himself changed into a giant insect. The story that follows is a profound and darkly comic study of family obligation, alienation, and the slow erasure of an individual by those around him.
This text is available in English translation from the original German. In under a hundred pages, Kafka created a work that gave a new adjective — Kafkaesque — to the world. Download this free EPUB from Better Gutenberg and read one of the twentieth century’s essential texts.