The Metamorphosis - Franz Kafka

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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.”