Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was a German-speaking Jewish writer of Prague, then in Austria-Hungary. Trained in law, he worked for most of his career at the Workers' Accident Insurance Institute for the Kingdom of Bohemia and wrote in the evenings. He published only a few stories in his lifetime; his novels The Trial, The Castle and Amerika appeared after his death from tuberculosis, edited by his friend Max Brod.
The Metamorphosis is a novella in three parts about Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman in cloth who supports his parents and his seventeen-year-old sister Grete, and who wakes one morning in his room to find that he has been changed into a monstrous insect. Kafka tells the story plainly, in the third person and almost entirely from Gregor's point of view, never explaining the transformation and never letting it become a dream.
1914-1915 (published 1925) · Early 20th Century · Novel
The Trial follows Josef K., a respected chief clerk at a large bank in an unnamed city, from the morning of his thirtieth birthday, when two warders appear in his lodgings and tell him he is under arrest, to the eve of his thirty-first, when two men in frock coats lead him to a quarry and kill him. Neither K. nor the reader ever learns what he is accused of or what law he has broken.
