"One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug."

Franz Kafka is considered one of the greats of surrealism and existentialist literature. The dark themes of existential anxiety and alienation that come to life in his writings (sometimes in absurdist situations) are what make him one of the pillars of the modernist and post-modernist literature.

The Metamorphosis chronicles the plight of one Gregor Samsa and his family, as one day he wakes up to find he has been transformed into a massive bug. This sudden change throws the lives of the entire family into turmoil.