Only yesterday, Gregor Samsa was a meek salesman, browbeaten by his unappreciative employer and depended on fiercely by his ungrateful family. This morning, Gregor awakens to discover that, overnight, he has been transformed into a monstrous insect. As Gregor frantically tries to conceal his predicament, neither his family nor his unsympathetic employer accept that a terrible metamorphosis has upended his existence. Is Gregor’s condition only temporary? Will he eventually revert back to the person he was and resume his normal life? Or might he have to accept that his transformation is only an outward expression of how he—and those in his life—actually see him? First published in 1915, Kafka’s best-known tale has inspired numerous interpretations for more than a century and helped to establish the term “Kafkaesque� as a reference to a bizarre and nightmarish experience. This collection of his short fiction, in a new translation, includes more than 30 of his short stories and sketches, including “In the Penal Colony,� “The Stoker,� “The Judgment,� “A Country Doctor,� “A Hunger Artist,� and more.  

The story itself, Kafka's most famous, hardly needs describing - a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into an enormous bug - but Faber Finds is offering something rare, the very first English translation which has been out of print for over sixty years.

This pioneering translation by A. L. Lloyd was first published in 1937. A. L. Lloyd was multi-talented: ethnomusicologist, journalist, radio and television broadcaster, and translator. In this his centenary year (2008) Faber Finds is celebrating him in his first and last roles. His major work, Folk Song in England, is being reissued as are his Lorca and Kafka translations. As well as both being published in 1937 both were firsts; has anyone else had Spanish and German translations published in the same year?

It should also be mentioned that A. L. Lloyd was a lifelong communist. It is a delicious irony therefore that one of the first reviews of the Kafka was by Evelyn Waugh in the short-lived "Night" "and Day"; it was a good one too.

A fresh translation of Franz Kafka's "The Metamorphosis" from David Wyllie.

Like George Orwell, Franz Kafka has given his name to a world of nightmare, but in Kafka's world, it is never completely clear just what the nightmare is. The Trial, where the rules are hidden from even the highest officials, and if there is any help to be had, it will come from unexpected sources, is a chilling, blackly amusing tale that maintains, to the very end, a relentless atmosphere of disorientation. Superficially about bureaucracy, it is in the last resort a description of the absurdity of 'normal' human nature. Still more enigmatic is The Castle. Is it an allegory of a quasi-feudal system giving way to a new freedom for the subject? The search by a central European Jew for acceptance into a dominant culture? A spiritual quest for grace or salvation? An individual's struggle between his sense of independence and his need for approval? Is it all of these things? And K? Is he opportunist, victim, or an outsider battling against elusive authority? Finally, in his fables, Kafka deals in dark and quirkily humorous terms with the insoluble dilemmas of a world which offers no reassurance, and no reliable guidance to resolving our existential and emotional uncertainties and anxieties.

Superb collection by modern master explores the complexity, anxiety and futility of modern life. Excellent new English translations of the title story (considered by many critics Kafka's most perfect work), plus "The Judgment," "In the Penal Colony," "A Country Doctor" and "A Report to an Academy." Note.