CREATESPACE Metamorphosis. Franz Kafka

Avoid these privately published public domain books. They give no attention to typesetting, spelling errors, or really anything. Just copy and paste jobs.

The book is missing pages and the print quality is abismal

Awesome

You should read it, it's a good book.

The Ian Johnston translation of “The Metamorphosis” by Franz Kafka, published by Greyhound Press, provides the reader with a clean, updated version of the classic story first published in 1916.I compared it to the Willa and Edwin Muir translation found the Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces, 4th edition, copyright 1979.The new translation, from Greyhound Press, replaces archaic expressions with modern terms, clarifies punctuation with direct quotations, trims the extremely long sentences, and breaks up the long paragraphs. Yet the new translation remains completely faithful to the haunting story of Gregor, who awakens one morning to find himself transformed into a very large beetle.Here are a couple of examples of the changes:WordingOlder translation: Oh God, he thought, what an exhausting job I’ve picked on! (The lack of quotation marks and the outdated expression make this hard to follow.)Greyhound edition: “O God,” he thought, “what a demanding job I’ve chosen!”Clearer sentences and paragraphsOlder translation:Two strong people – he thought of his father and the servant girl – would be amply sufficient; they would only have to thrust their arms under his convex back, lever him out of the bed, bend down with their burden and then be patient enough to let him turn himself right over on the floor, where it was to be hoped his legs would then find their proper function.Greyhound edition:Two strong people – he thought of his father and servant girl – would have been quite sufficient. They would have only had to push their arms under his arched back to get him out of the bed, to bend down with their load, and then merely to exercise patience and care that he completed the flip onto the floor, where his diminutive legs would then, he hoped, acquire a purpose.CoverAll of this is included in an eye-catching cover featuring a silhouette beetle, which looks to me like a potato beetle. I always thought poor Gregor had turned into a cockroach, but it’s not specified in the story. The cleaning lady actually refers to Gregor as a dung-beetle, so I suppose the kind of beetle is irrelevant. It’s the no longer human part that really causes the problem.I strongly recommend this translation.