The Metamorphosis: And Other Stories

By Franz Kafka

From one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial: A collection that brings together the stories he allowed to be published during his lifetime, including his best-known tale of a man who wakes up transformed into an insect. 

To Max Brod, his literary executor, Kafka wrote: “Of all my writings the only books that can stand are these.”

“Kafka’s survey of the insectile situation of young Jews in inner Bohemia can hardly be improved upon: ‘With their posterior legs they were still glued to their father’s Jewishness and with their wavering anterior legs they found no new ground.’ There is a sense in which Kafka’s Jewish question (‘What have I in common with Jews?’) has become everybody’s question, Jewish alienation the template for all our doubts. What is Muslimness? What is femaleness? What is Polishness? These days we all find our anterior legs flailing before us. We’re all insects, all Ungeziefer, now.” —Zadie Smith, bestselling author of White Teeth and On Beauty

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: May 14, 2009
• ISBN: 9780307496775

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was a primarily German-speaking Bohemian author, known for his impressive fusion of realism and fantasy in his work. Despite his commendable writing abilities, Kafka worked as a lawyer for most of his life and wrote in his free time. Though most of Kafka’s literary acclaim was gained postmortem, he earned a respected legacy and now is regarded as a major literary figure of the 20th century.

Reviews for The Metamorphosis

[aeyan_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Striving to understand the frequent usage of 'Kafkaesque' to describe a proliferation of things literary, I found a nice bargain copy of this translation of Kafka many moons past. I'm unsure if I accomplished my goal, being left wondering if I need to read 'The Trial' to solidify that understanding, yet having no desire to engage anymore with his works. This collection of stories left me repulsed ('The Metamorphosis'), disgusted ('In the Penal Colony'), irritated ('The Stoker'), or bored (all inclusive). I used the experience as a stylistic exercise, but even that failed to render the stories any more approachable for me. Taking a month to finally finish, the slow progress was a source of frustration, and the more frustrating thought is that Kafka would have probably found that entirely too funny.

[geraldlange · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The man is nuts. This is not to say that I don't approve; but, man-oh-man.....his conversations read as drunken insanity that is only barely functional, and that on a good day!

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'm glad I read Kafka's story "The Metamorphosis," about Gregor Samsa, because now I understand the joke in "The Producers" that references it so much better. Don't you just like pop cultural references in film and TV? Of course you do - look at how successful the Simpsons et al are.

[delta351 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was not looking forward to reading this book, as I had previously read Metamorphosis and The Trial. I was pleasantly surprised by Country Doctor and especially Penal Colony. Very strong characters and symbolism in PC. You have to do your research on these stories or you miss quite a bit of symbolism.

[salmondaze · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'm giving this book a certain score, but realize first and foremost that it is wildly inconsistent. There can be no doubt that "The Metamorphosis" and "In The Penal Colony" are masterpieces of short literature that rank with the highest of perhaps anything that's been written in the form. The works that come close to those are "The Judgment" and "A Hunger Artist" which perhaps most merit the score I give. They're very good achievements, but they don't have a good connection to the hand that wrote "The Trial", which is Kafka's unfinished masterpiece.The rest of this collection is somewhat similar to Typee from Herman Melville. The elements of good writing are present but they haven't formed into that je ne sais quois that forms literature. These works can't even be called Kafka-esque in the same way Typee can't be considered Melvillean. Everyone will remember Melville for Moby Dick, a work that almost achieves the status of The Great American Novel, and similarly Kafka will be remembered for "The Trial" and the short stories for which this collection is partially named, but both authors must've not been able to feel their way out naturally since they both produce art that is wildly non-indicative.It's not so much that these other stories are bad, but in a collection like this they are indeed "other." It's too bad that Kafka was not as prolific as Melville, since Melville managed to pump out a good bevy of excellent short stories between Moby Dick and his final hurrah of "Billy Budd, Sailor." This final stage of Melville's life carries almost as much of his legacy as Moby Dick itself. Kafka, on the other hand couldn't seem to decide what he wanted to produce in finality. Or else he could, but he still dotted it with less important work along the way.I would suppose it were a blessing that Kafka couldn't decide on his ultimate vision the way Edgar Allan Poe or H.P. Lovecraft could. After all, his vision was a lot more complicated. It encased the full experience of the 20th century man, parts of which were left out for Poe or Lovecraft- Poe being nevertheless a literary auteur of the strange, frightening, and imaginative. Kafka, in his few masterworks, reached into the soul of man and reflected it back to us in all of its stunning sadism and otherwise. His beautiful portraits of transformation and auto-mechanism should be familiar to all. We can learn the ways we shouldn't treat each other in Kafka.

[whitewavedarling · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I'd read some of the works collected here before--most notably "The Hunger Artist" and "The Metamorphosis"--and rereading them was a clear reminder of why and how they've stuck with me all these years. Kafka's sideways examination of the human condition, and social contracts and understandings, is as powerful and striking as ever, smartly written and driven forward with such intention as to be near other-worldly. Somehow, it's still "The Hunger Artist" that draws me back again and again as a heartbreaking and yet ever-meaningful story. But on this read, going through the whole of the collection, I also was left speechless by a number of other stories of Kakfa's which I'd not gotten around to reading before--especially "The Stoker", "A Report for an Academy", and "First Sorrow." I'm sure I'll be returning to this collection.