Nervous brilliance

摘要

In 1915 a short story called "The Metamorphosis" ("Die Verwandlung") was published in a small German magazine. It told the story of Gregor Samsa, a salesman who wakes up one morning to find that he has turned into an enormous bug. The author, Franz Kafka, was a middle-ranking civil servant working in Prague. He would die less than ten years later, a little-known author of three novels and several shorter works. But "The Metamorphosis"-per-haps 50 pages long-would go on to inspire countless stage adaptations and doctoral theses and scores of subsequent writers. The story, along with the novels "The Trial" and "The Castle", ensured Kafka's place as one of the most important writers of the 20th century.