The Metamorphosis

"By (Author): Franz Kafka Enriched Classics offer readers accessible editions of great works of literature enhanced by helpful notes and commentary. Each book includes educational tools alongside the text, enabling students and readers alike to gain a deeper and more developed understanding of the writer and their work. When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin. So begins The Metamorphosis, one of the most recognizable opening lines in literature. The story of Gregor Samsa, a young man who, after transforming overnight into a giant, beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, and a quintessentially alienated man. One of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction, The Metamorphosis is a harrowing yet absurdly comic meditation on inadequacy, guilt, and isolation. A work in which, in the words of Vladimir Nabokov, contrast and unity, style and matter, manner and plot are most perfectly integrated."