From Powells.com
Booksellers’ 25 Favorite Novellas
Staff Pick
Whether this is your first time encountering this classic story, or you haven't read it since school, Bernofsky's new translation sizzles with humor and humanity often obscured in previous renderings. Recommended By Jubel B., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Franz Kafka's 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. It is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. This hugely influential work inspired George Orwell, Albert Camus, Jorge Louis Borges, and Ray Bradbury, while continuing to unsettle millions of readers. In her new translation of Kafka's masterpiece, Susan Bernofsky strives to capture both the humor and the humanity in this macabre tale, underscoring the ways in which Gregor Samsa's grotesque metamorphosis is just the physical manifestation of his longstanding spiritual impoverishment.
Review
"Bernofsky is one of the finest translators of German working today, and her new English version of Kafka's most famous tale distinguishes itself from previous translations in its first sentence." Slate
Review
"This welcome new edition of was translated by Susan Bernofsky in a smoother, less Germanic, more contemporary voice than the Muir version most Anglophone readers remember from school, and is introduced by the master of biological horror, director David Cronenberg." Andrew Hultkrans
Review
"[A] new, exacting translation." Bookforum
Review
"Bernofsky has performed an act of magic with her translation. She's found the human inside Kafka's words--imploring and beseeching and begging, in his own quiet way, for help--and delivered him to us, in flesh and blood. It's a letter that comes more than a century too late, but it's finally been delivered. That, in a quiet and bookish way, is some kind of small act of hope." Arlice Davenport The Wichita Eagle
About the Author
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was born of Jewish parents in Prague. Several of his story collections were published in his lifetime and his novels, The Trial, The Castle, and Amerika, were published posthumously by his editor Max Brod.Susan Bernofsky is the acclaimed translator of Hermann Hesse, Robert Walser, and Jenny Erpenbeck, and the recipient of many awards, including the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize and the Hermann Hesse Translation Prize. She teaches literary translation at Columbia University and lives in New York.