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Kafka’s tale of a man who wakes to find he has changed into a giant insect still has the power to shock and delight a century after it was first published. Many regard it as the greatest short story in all literary fiction.

Metamorphosis exemplifies the world Kafka invented on paper – recognizable but not quite real, precisely detailed and yet dreamlike.

This world is now called “Kafkaesque”, to denote a sense of suddenly inhabiting a world in which one’s customary habits of thought and behavior are confounded and made hopeless. [A bit like our current situation of Covid]

A German-language novelist and short story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists faced by bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible social-bureaucratic powers and has been interpreted as exploring themes of alienation, existential anxiety, guilt, and absurdity.

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