""When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. 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 twentieth-century fiction. As W.H. Auden wrote, "Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.""--;The metamorphosis -- Critical essays.;"Translated, edited, and with an Introduction by Stanley Corngold. Featuring essays by Philip Roth, W.H Auden, and Walter Benjamin. This Modern Library edition collects Stanley Corngold's acclaimed English translation--long hailed as the gold standard by scholars and general readers alike--along with six critical essays by writers including Philip Roth, W.H. Auden, and Walter Benjamin, background and contextual material, and a new Introduction from Corngold himself"--