The Metamorphosis' is a short novel by Franz Kafka, first published in 1915. It is often cited as one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century and is widely studied in colleges and universities across the western world. The story begins with a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, waking to find himself transformed into an insect. ""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, Franz Kafka begins his masterpiece, 'The Metamorphosis'. It is the story of a young man who, transformed overnight into a giant beetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace to his family, an outsider in his own home, a quintessentially alienated man. A harrowingthough absurdly comicmeditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation, 'The Metamorphosis' has taken its place as one of the most widely read and influential works of twentieth-century fiction. About the Author: Franz Kafka was born to Jewish parents in Bohemia in 1883. Kafka's father was a luxury goods retailer who worked long hours and as a result never became close with his son. Kafka had a thorough education and was fluent in both German and Czech. As a young man, he was hired to work at an insurance company where he was quickly promoted despite his desire to devote his time to writing rather than insurance. Over the course of his life, Kafka wrote a great number of stories, letters, and essays, but burned the majority of his work before his death and requested that his friend Max Brod burn the rest. Brod, however, did not fulfill this request and published many of the works in the years following Kafka's death of tuberculosis in 1924. Thus, most of Kafka's works were published posthumously, and he did not live to see them recognized as some of the most important examples of literature of the twentieth century. Kafka's works are considered among the most significant pieces of existentialist writing, and he is remembered for his poignant depictions of internal conflicts with alienation and oppression. His stories include 'The Metamorphosis' (1912) and 'In the Penal Colony' (1914), while his novels are 'The Trial' (1925), 'The Castle' (1926) and 'Amerika' (1927). All of Kafka's published works, except several letters he wrote in Czech, were written in German.