Franz Kafka

The young man Gregor Samsa wakes up, deformed. Transformed into a giant insect. Kafka’s short story Die Verwandlung is for me one of the most exciting and unsettling works of world literature. The text explores how a person can be lost, step by step: at first his own body seems to have changed, and then the outside world is dislodged, first with his boss, followed by his father and then his mother. Eventually, even his beloved sister leaves Gregor. In the end, all he is left with is an empty room. Die Verwandlung exposes social and familial power games in a very funny and intelligent way, encouraging us to think about our own every-day lives and relationships. Are there people around us who sometimes feel like insects? Or have we ourselves, even if just for a short time, felt transformed by our own internal isolation? (Sophie Reyer)