The Metamorphosis

Description

Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis - arguably the greatest, most famous and most unnerving short work of literary fiction ever written - is a hundred years old in 2015. This centenary edition offers the first complete English translation of Kafka's text (by A. L. Lloyd from 1937) plus a richly detailed new introduction to the story by novelist Richard T. Kelly, describing its genesis and the life of its creator. In The Metamorphosis' unforgettable opening sentence we meet travelling salesman Gregor Samsa - on a rare overnight stay in the apartment he shares with his family, paid for by his ceaseless labour - who awakes one morning 'from a troubled dream' to find himself 'changed in his bed to some kind of monstrous vermin'. 'There is nothing which The Metamorphosis could be surpassed by - one of the few great, perfect poetic works of this century.' Elias Canetti 'My greatest masterpieces of twentieth-century prose are, in this order, Joyce's Ulysses, Kafka's [Metamorphosis], Bely's Petersburg and the first half of Proust's fairy tale In Search of Lost Time.' Vladimir Nabokov

A. L. Lloyd (1908-82) was born in London and emigrated to Australia in his teens, where he worked as a farmhand and shepherd. It was in Australia that he first became interested in folk song. On his return to England, he was introduced to a group of left-wing intellectuals that included Dylan Thomas and A. L. Morton, who in turn led him to the Communist Party, of which he was to become a life-long member. Along with Ewan MacColl, Lloyd was instrumental in the British post-war folk revival, as a prolific writer, performer and broadcaster. Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was one of the major writers of the twentieth-century. He was born to a middle-class Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing is among the most influential in Western literature. Richard T Kelly is the author of the novels Crusaders (2008) and The Possessions of Doctor Forrest (2011). Eclipse, his first script for television, aired on Channel 4 in 2010. He has written several studies of filmmakers: Alan Clarke (1998), The Name of this Book is Dogme 95 (2000), and the authorized biography Sean Penn: His Life & Times (2004). In 2007 he edited Ten Bad Dates with De Niro: A Book of Alternative Film Lists. He blogs at http://richard-t-kelly.blogspot.com.