The Metamorphosis

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The Metamorphosis

By: Franz Kafka

Narrated by: Ralph Cosham

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About this listen

“One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.”

With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young traveling salesman who, transformed overnight into a giant, beetle-like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. Rather than being surprised at the transformation, the members of his family despise it as an impending burden upon themselves.

A harrowing - though absurdly comic - meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, The Metamorphosis has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of 20th-century fiction. As W. H. Auden wrote, “Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.”

FRANZ KAFKA (1883–1924), one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century, was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing, much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously, is considered by some people to be among the most influential in Western literature, inspiring such writers as Albert Camus, Rex Warner, and Samuel Beckett.

©Public Domain (P)2011 Blackstone Audio, Inc.

Franz KafkaRalph CoshamBlackstone Audio, Inc.

Fantasy

Fiction

Genre Fiction

Jewish Heritage

Metaphysics

Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins

Philosophy

Political

Emotionally Gripping

Science Fiction

Heartfelt

Mind-bending

Funny

Short Stories

Fantasy Fiction Genre Fiction Jewish Heritage Metaphysics Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins Philosophy Political Emotionally Gripping Science Fiction Heartfelt Mind-bending Funny Short Stories

Critic reviews

“In The Metamorphosis Kafka reached the height of his mastery: he wrote something which he could never surpass, because there is nothing which The Metamorphosis could be surpassed by - one of the few great, perfect poetic works of this century.” (Elias Canetti, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1981)

Most relevant

One day you are a vital human being, strong, productive, even respected then you metamorphose into a beetle, a paralysis, a heart attack, a cancer and you want to be your self and you try so hard it breaks your shell, your view of your self, and little by little that you begin to disappear, to embarrass the very ones you love, some people see you there behind the label, like a spectre and you try not be a problem but you have changed so much no one understands they are not aware of their chrysalis and can not hear your voice.
To wake up in one of Kafka’s visions is to be a modern human being, his warnings are not romantic or hopeful they are the truth of our time crystallised in literature, that describes the angst of the everyday person in allegories that are of our time.
This novella is one of those books everyone should read, it is an important part of our culture and a warning to all the temporarily able.