Reviews

Real rating: 4.5
About 10 years ago, a little more, I picked up this book rather by accident. Most likely out of boredom, I read the first few pages and found myself in an incredibly absurd setting. The complex writing style, metaphor and openness of the story kept me reading until the end. Kafka was a genius and he proved that impressively here.

The story is about Gregor Samsa, the son of a family, who one morning turns into an insect. So far so bad, we witness his family becoming more and more estranged from him. In addition to the obvious of the narrative, I think underlying the work is an incredibly apt critique of capitalist society. Samsa, who finds his work itself alienating and meaningless, struggles with social relegation in a world where the individual is reduced to his or her labor value. The fact that he is now unable to work in order to feed his family, which must be understood here as an economic unit and his social center, leaves him with the shattering realization that his family, which at first turns to him with more understanding but in the end even forcibly turns away from him, have not regarded him as a social human being but as an economic unit. Timeless, if not timely.

Of course, not everything is perfect about this work, but all my criticism is based on subjective feelings. The characters around Samsa, who has incredible depth, seem very stereotypical and superficial. I am sure that this is intentional; in my opinion, Kafka, who already expects a lot from his reader, could have been a bit bolder.

lucilita's review against another edition

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3.0

3/5

my first kafka! what can i say that hasnt been said already? my favorite part is the one where he hears the music his sister is playing:

“Was he an animal, that music could move him so? He felt as if the way to the unknown nourishment he longed for were coming to light.”

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