"The books we need are those that hit us like an axe on the frozen sea of our soul," Kafka wrote to Oskar Pollak a few years before writing "The Metamorphosis," a work that undoubtedly belongs exactly to this category of books. "The Metamorphosis" was written in 1912 and published in 1915 - one of the few works of the Czech author that were published during his lifetime.

The core of the myth of "The Metamorphosis" is as simple as it is inconceivable: Gregor Samsa, an ordinary man, wakes up one morning transformed into an insect.