The Metamorphosis
Bantam Classics · first published 1915 · 224 pages
A traveling salesman wakes one morning to find he has been changed into an enormous insect.
The impossible event is told in calm, practical sentences, and the family's reactions are as unsettling as the change itself.
For a night when the room feels too small.
About this book
Gregor Samsa has been supporting his parents and his sister through a job he dislikes. When he wakes up transformed, his first worries are about missing his train and losing his position. Shut in his room, he listens through the door as his family adjusts to life without his wages and to the creature in the next room. The story is short, plain and strange, and it leaves lasting questions about duty and belonging.