One hundred years ago this month, Franz Kafka published an odd story about traveling salesman who wakes up a bug. Since then, it's held up with uncanny ease and charm under the pressure of being acclaimed one of the most influential works of 20th-century literature. Here are a few links to help you celebrate your #SamsaCentennial, you old dung beetle!
- Translations in the public domain: the classic English translation by Willa and Edwin Muir, and the excellent David Wyllie translation
- The German original!
- Vladimir Nabokov's Cornell lecture on "The Metamorphosis"
- If you're in London, the Jewish Community Centre JW3 is hosting its #KafkaFest of music, theatre, and cinema, including a stage adaptation of Kafka's infamous (unsent) letter to his father.
Alon Nashman in JW3's "Kafka & Son." (Publicity still via stagereview.co.uk)
- Richard T. Kelly's lively and informative essay in The Guardian, "Kafka's Metamorphosis: 100 Thoughts for 100 Years," covers the essentials of Kafka and his best loved story
- The German-English paper The Local talks to Columbia's Susan Bernofsky about her 2015 translation of "The Metamorphosis," especially that tricky and crucial first sentence
- "The Metamorphosis" metamorphosed to theater: Stephen Berkoff's 1969 adaptation is the best known -- Mikhail Baryshnikov played Gregor on Broadway in its 1989 run -- but there's also a 1983 opera and Arthur Pita's 2011 dance-theater adaptation for the Royal Ballet
- And who could forget our Twelfth Doctor Peter Capaldi's Oscar-winning short-film, Franz Kafka's It's A Wonderful Life?
Royal Ballet principal Edward Watson as Gregor in Pita's "Metamorphosis." (Photo via Royal Opera House, (c) ROH 2011.)
Do you have any favorite Kafka resources or "Metamorphosis" events? Tell us in the comments! And don't miss out on Fiction Unbound's appreciation of "The Metamorphosis," coming this Friday!
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