“One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.”
The life of Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman, takes a horrifying turn when he wakes up one day to find that he has transformed into a giant bug. Alienated and unable to communicate with his family due to his insectoid vocalisations, Gregor is forced to face constant disdain and repulsion. Cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the twentieth century, The Metamorphosis, a novella written by Franz Kafka, concerns itself with the themes of alienation, disillusionment and existentialism. Samsa struggles to reconcile his humanity with his transformation, and Kafka, very deftly, weaves his readers into a web that deals with the absurdity of existence, the alienating experience of modern life and the cruelty and incomprehensibility of authoritarian power, leaving them at once stunned and impressed.