In our present era, marked by a ferment of genetic engineering and hybridization (not to mention isolation and economic hardship), revisiting this text seems not only appropriate but necessary. And you like to be depressed and disgusted and bored.A totemic novella of Modernism and alienation, Franz Kafka’s “bug piece” has been in publication for nearly a century, baffling and delighting readers in equal measure with its fundamental strangeness and rigorous avoidance of explanation.

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?ĭon't waste your time on this book unless you have a very active imagination and like to create your own world in your head and want this book to stimulate your imagination. What about Edoardo Ballerini’s performance did you like? This book is a disgusting, depressing, boring, gloomy story that makes no sense and totally uninteresting.

Well he could have written a more interesting story. What could Franz Kafka and Susan Bernofsky (translator) have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you? I will read one more Kafka book just to give him a fair chance and decide for sure whether he is really as bad as I think after reading this book or whether this one was just a rotten apple. Would you try another book from Franz Kafka and Susan Bernofsky (translator) and/or Edoardo Ballerini? In her new translation of Kafka's masterpiece, Susan Bernofsky strives to capture both the humor and the humanity in this macabre tale, underscoring the ways in which Gregor Samsa's grotesque metamorphosis is just the physical manifestation of his longstanding spiritual impoverishment. This hugely influential work inspired George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jorge Louis Borges, and Ray Bradbury, while continuing to unsettle millions of readers. It is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. 'This fine version, with David Cronenberg's inspired introduction and the new translator's beguiling afterword, is, I suspect, the most disturbing though the most comforting of all so far others will follow, but don't hesitate: this is the transforming text for you.' (Richard Howard)įranz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world.

The metamorphosis susan bernofsky