The Metamorphosis and Other Stories: (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century)

With the opening sentence of The Metamorphosis Franz Kafka introduced modern man to his interior condition. After awaking to discover he has been transformed into an enormous insect, Gregor Samsa becomes an object of disgrace to his family and is left to hide away within the confines of his room. An imaginative parable about human alienation, The Metamorphosis is also an absurdly comic tale whose narrative effects remain revolutionary today.

Kafka's profound and humorous exploration of alienation and authority is found in the other fictional pieces he published during his lifetime, all collected in this edition. Included are Meditation, a group of Kafka's early studies; "The Judgement", his most powerful statement on the father-son conflict; "The Stoker", the first chapter of the unfinished novel Amerika; "In the Penal Colony", perhaps Kafka's most disturbing piece; A Country Doctor, tales written just before he contracted tuberculosis; the story "The Coal-Scuttle Rider"; and A Fasting-Artist, Kafka's final collection of stories, published just before his death. Together, these works reveal the breadth of Kafka's literary vision and the extraordinary imaginative depth of his thought.