When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.

With thisstartling, bizarre, yet surprisingly funny first sentence, Kafka begins his masterpiece,TheMetamorphosis. It is the story of ayoung man who, transformed overnight into a giantbeetlelike insect, becomes an object of disgrace tohis family, an outsider in his own home, aquintessentially alienated man. A harrowingthoughabsurdly comicmeditation on human feelings of inadequacy, guilt, and isolation,TheMetamorphosishas taken its place as oneof the most widely read and influential works oftwentieth-century fiction.

As W.H. Auden wrote, Kafka is important to us because his predicament is the predicament of modern man.