Kafka, The Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka

1915

Manuscript

Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis) is arguably the most famous of Kafka’s works. It begins in a typically puzzling fashion: a salesman Gregor Samsa, awaked in the morning after disturbing dreams to find himself transformed into a verminous, insect- like creature. It was one of the few works that Kafka (1883-1924) managed to see into print before his premature death from tuberculosis.

An introduction to Kafka's The Metamorphosis by Prof Ritchie Robertson, Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature, University of Oxford.

Comments

What makes this a treasure?

The Metamorphosis is one of the key works of modern literature because it’s one that resists complete explanation… The Kafka collection deserves to count among the Bodleian’s treasures because it is the work of one of the greatest authors of modern European writing and also because of the peculiar, adventurous way that it arrives in Oxford so far from the place where it was written and so far from the place where, for some time, it was kept.

Posted by Prof. Richie Robertson

On 05/09/2011

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