Franz Kafka - The Metamorphosis

With a week left in Singapore, I thought it was the perfect time to break out the low-commitment short stories, so I read The Metamorphosis.

At first I thought the prose was very strange, and it didn't read at all like the excerpts I had read earlier (most notably, Vladimir Nabokov's essay on it). Turns out that my version - by Christopher Moncrieff - was just one of many, many translations of The Metamorphosis.

This Guardian article nicely summarises the translations available. Moncrieff's is regarded as an ''idiosyncratic'' one, while Susan Bernofsky's and Michael Hoffman's appear to be the ''canon'' ones - relatively speaking, anyway.

I was expecting something alienating and self-consciously bizarre, like something out of Lovecraft maybe, but my expectations were confounded. The Metamorphosis is one of the most touching and human stories I have ever read. I found myself rooting for Gregor Samsa the whole time and have even begun to view real-life roaches with a certain sympathy.

One of the best things about this story is that its meaning is entirely inconclusive. Jon read it after I did and it's been fun to just sit and talk about what we thought of it and what other people have thought of it. It seems everyone thinks something different. In that way it's a story that brings people together by discussing their differences.

I do want to read some other translations as well as re-read the Nabokov essay, which was what made me read The Metamorphosis in the first place. When I am back, maybe.