Metamorphosis, The

"When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin." With this startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetle like insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. It shows how Samsa doesn't want to be burden to anyone and how he loves his sister. A harrowing -- though absurdly comic -- meditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation.