Kafka first studied chemistry at the Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague but after two weeks switched to law. Later, Kafka acquired some knowledge of the French language and culture from Flaubert, one of his favorite authors. His stories include 'The Metamorphosis' (1912) and ' In the Penal Colony' (1914), whereas his posthumous novels include The Trial (1925), The Castle (1926) and Amerika (1927).ĭespite first language, Kafka also spoke fluent Czech. People consider his unique body of much incomplete writing, mainly published posthumously, among the most influential in European literature. Jewish middle-class family of this major fiction writer of the 20th century spoke German. Prague-born writer Franz Kafka wrote in German, and his stories, such as ' The Metamorphosis' (1916), and posthumously published novels, including The Trial (1925), concern troubled individuals in a nightmarishly impersonal world. Auden wrote, 'Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.' A harrowing-though absurdly comic-meditation 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. 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. With it's startling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first opening, Kafka begins his masterpiece, The Metamorphosis.

His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.' He was laying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments on top of which the bed quilt could hardly keep in position and was about to slide off completely. 'As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.

The metamorphosis book