The metamorphosis and other stories (2000, Penguin)
216 pages
English language
Published Nov. 7, 2000 by Penguin.
This collection of new translations brings together the small proportion of Kafka's works that he thought worthy of publication. It includes 'Metamorphosis', his most famous work, an exploration of horrific transformation and alienation; 'Meditation', a collection of his earlier studies; 'The Judgement', written in a single night of frenzied creativity; 'The Stoker', the first chapter of a novel set in America and a fascinating occasional piece, 'The Aeroplanes at Brescia', Kafka's eyewitness account of an air display in 1909. Together, these stories reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.
Knowing this book is about a man who wakes up as a cockroach, I expected surrealism. Instead, I got a sketch of the progressive psychological changes an independent man and his family experience when he's unexpectedly disabled.
