Just Because: 'The Metamorphosis'

I've been going through some of my old books, trying desperately to winnow some out. Which to keep? Which to give away ~ and to whom? Most are paperbacks, so they're not worth much in that way. But in every other way, to me, they're worth a lot. They're worth the knowledge and the creativity, the beauty of the phrases and thoughts within, and they're worth the memories I have of reading them. One of the best is The Metamorphosis (Die Verwandlung), by Franz Kafka.
   Kaftka, of course, wrote many novels and short stories, of which Metamorphosis, first published in 1915, is perhaps the most well-known. Lengthwise, it's more like a short story. Some call it a novella. Because Kafka wrote in German, there is some question about exactly how certain key words should be translated, for example, the creature into which the protagonist has been transformed, and about the effect of the difference in sentence structure between German and English. Either way, here's the beginning of The Metamorphosis (as translated by Willa and Edwin Muir):

1

   As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect. He was lying on his hard, as it were armor-plated, back and when he lifted his head a little he could see his dome-like 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. His numerous legs, which were pitifully thin compared to the rest of his bulk, waved helplessly before his eyes.
   What has happened to me? he thought. It was no dream. His room, a regular human
bedroom, only rather too small, lay quiet between the four familiar walls. Above the table on which a collection of cloth samples was unpacked and spread out—Samsa was a commercial traveler— hung the picture which he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and put into a pretty gilt frame. It showed a lady, with a fur cap on and a fur stole, sitting upright and holding out to the spectator a huge fur muff into which the whole of her forearm had vanished!
 
   Gregor's eyes turned next to the window, and the overcast sky—one could hear rain drops beating on the window gutter—made him melancholy. What about sleeping a little longer and forgetting all this nonsense, he thought, but it could not be done, for he was accustomed to sleep on his right side and in his present condition he could not turn himself over. However violently he forced himself towards his right side he always rolled onto his back again. He tried it at least a hundred times, shutting his eyes to keep from seeing his struggling legs, and only desisted when he began to feel in his side a faint dull ache he had never experienced before.
   ...