The Metamorphosis : a new translation, texts and contexts, criticism / Franz Kafka ; translated by Susan Bernofsky; edited by Mark M. Anderson.

Franz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. The Metamorphosis is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. In her new translation of Kafka's masterpiece, Susan Bernofsky strives to capture both the humor and the humanity in this macabre tale, underscoring the ways in which Gregor Samsa's grotesque metamorphosis is just the physical manifestation of his longstanding spiritual impoverishment. Mark Anderson's critical apparatus brings together a wide variety of analyses of the existential story, ranging from the psychological vantages of Sacher-Masoch and Nietzsche to focuses of Kafka's relationship to animals, Judaism, and photographs. Along with snippets of Kafka's letters and diary entries concerning The Metamorphosis, a chronology and selected bibliography are also included. --