Rating: 
Summary: A great bargain
Review: Ok, this book is short ... just 88 pages but, what a great price! Like so much of kafka's other writings, these stories are surreal, almost like nightmares. The Metamorphasis has much in common with kafka's novel "The Trial" in that the main character, a low level white collar worker, wakes up one morning and finds his life has changed. In "The Trial," he wakes up to discover he is under arrest. In "The Metamorphasis," he discovers he has turned into an insect. The reaction of his family is the main thrust of the story and is probably based upon Kafka's own autobiographical insecurities. Another truly surreal story is "A Country Doctor." Like in a bad dream, many disturbing events occur and reality changes and becomes distorted. The nightmarish mood Kafka creates is masterful. To be sure, these stories are often hard to truly understand but they are woth reading and pondering. For a rock bottom price, treat yourself to some excellent and very challenging literature.
Rating: 
Summary: mano kazkoks tas rewiuew yra spie tya ir ta
Review: pavasaris saikle kasi kais kar kaspas laukas pieva kelias upe silo juosta melyna ir pavasarioba;ltas izas us geismu
Rating:
Summary: Wow. I haven't read the other stories yet but...
Review: the Metamophosis is INCREDIBLE. It is one of the greatest stories I have ever read. I found it extremely disturbing, especially the ending. After I finished, I was kept awake for an hour or two in bed just thinking about it. A MUST for any reader.
Rating: 
Summary: A bit confused . . .
Review: There is something to this story, but I'm at a loss as to what it is. Misery loves company, maybe. Part of the problem is that I am not sure what Kafka's metaphor is representing. The closest thing I can see is someone getting into a crippling accident, and the family getting alientated by all the care they have to give to the relative. Image what Christopher Reeves' family is going though right now since he is paralyzed.I will meet Kafka's Gregor Samsa with Tolstoy's Platon Karatayev from "War and Peace". Platon (Plato?) was a prisoner of the French during their invasion of Moscow in 1813. Instead of curling up into a ball, Platon always busied himself in helping other prisoners. In other words, he was a prefiguring of Victor Frankel in Auschwitz. Tolstoy said that Platon was like a large ball of light who expanded, then disappeared. We may undergo a physical change, such as paralysis, or the slow march of old age, but our soul is immortal. It stays the same, and never ages. This body is vile and will be worm-food soon enough. But the soul is differnt. We change out own soul. The bug-man Samsa still had his soul, though stuill a bug, as Platon still had his his free soul, though still a prisoner. Although I think this book may really be about Samsa's family (a dimesnion of change that Ovid missed), and not the bug-man! I'm still the same person weather I'm wearing a red shirt or a blue shirt, or have one arm or two arms, coiffed or bald. I only change if I sell my soul, or perfect my soul! That is the REAL change and metamorphasis! A rather distasteful slice of nihilistic pie.
Rating:
Summary: A bit confused . . .
Review: There is something to this story, but I'm at a loss as to what it is. Misery loves company, maybe. Part of the problem is that I am not sure what Kafka's metaphor is representing. The closest thing I can see is someone getting into a crippling accident, and the family getting alientated by all the care they have to give to the relative. Image what Christopher Reeves' family is going though right now since he is paralyzed. I will meet Kafka's Gregor Samsa with Tolstoy's Platon Karatayev from "War and Peace". Platon (Plato?) was a prisoner of the French during their invasion of Moscow in 1813. Instead of curling up into a ball, Platon always busied himself in helping other prisoners. In other words, he was a prefiguring of Victor Frankel in Auschwitz. Tolstoy said that Platon was like a large ball of light who expanded, then disappeared. We may undergo a physical change, such as paralysis, or the slow march of old age, but our soul is immortal. It stays the same, and never ages. This body is vile and will be worm-food soon enough. But the soul is differnt. We change out own soul. The bug-man Samsa still had his soul, though stuill a bug, as Platon still had his his free soul, though still a prisoner. Although I think this book may really be about Samsa's family (a dimesnion of change that Ovid missed), and not the bug-man! I'm still the same person weather I'm wearing a red shirt or a blue shirt, or have one arm or two arms, coiffed or bald. I only change if I sell my soul, or perfect my soul! That is the REAL change and metamorphasis! A rather distasteful slice of nihilistic pie.
Rating:
Summary: Ever feel alienated?
Review: This story is one of pure genius. Upon reading the first paragraph I was baffled. The story is pure: it begins with a climax, one it takes a few pages to believe. None of us have ever been exactly in Gregor's position, but everyone can identify with his struggle. Well-written and poignant, this short story deserves a go by everyone. Begin and end the piece with an open mind.
Rating:
Summary: Powerfully Disturbing
Review: This thin edition, containing only a few of Kafka's short stoires, seems unlikely to cause the powerfully disturbing reactions that it brings out in its readers. In his story "The Metamorphosis," Kafka writes a tale of how a salesman turns into a bug overnight. As unlikely as this situation sounds, Kafka succeeds in making the situation seem real by going into extreme detail about both the physical and emotional effects of the character's metamorphosis. Although logic prevents anyone from actually believing they may turn into a bug, readers can still relate to the common emotions of the story, of being alienated and unwanted, of being a cumbersome burden unto others. The other stories in the edition are equally engaging and disturbing in their realistic, sometimes frightful descriptions.
Rating:
Summary: Powerfully Disturbing
Review: This thin edition, containing only a few of Kafka's short stoires, seems unlikely to cause the powerfully disturbing reactions that it brings out in its readers. In his story "The Metamorphosis," Kafka writes a tale of how a salesman turns into a bug overnight. As unlikely as this situation sounds, Kafka succeeds in making the situation seem real by going into extreme detail about both the physical and emotional effects of the character's metamorphosis. Although logic prevents anyone from actually believing they may turn into a bug, readers can still relate to the common emotions of the story, of being alienated and unwanted, of being a cumbersme burden unto others. The other stories in the edition are equally engaging and disturbing in their realistic, sometimes frightful descriptions.
Rating:
Summary: Powerfully Disturbing
Review: This thin edition, containing only a few of Kafka's short stoires, seems unlikely to cause the powerfully disturbing reactions that it brings out in its readers. In his story "The Metamorphosis," Kafka writes a tale of how a salesman turns into a bug overnight. As unlikely as this situation sounds, Kafka succeeds in making the situation seem real by going into extreme detail about both the physical and emotional effects of the character's metamorphosis. Although logic prevents anyone from actually believing they may turn into a bug, readers can still relate to the common emotions of the story, of being alienated and unwanted, of being a cumbersme burden unto others. The other stories in the edition are equally engaging and disturbing in their realistic, sometimes frightful descriptions.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinated in fear and anxiety
Review: Three of these stories , " The Metamorphosis ' ' The Penal Colony' ' The Country Doctor' are among the most Kafkaesque of Kafka's stories. They awaken in the reader a vague anxiety, a confusion, a sense of disturbance it is difficult to adequately describe. They give us a sense of life as something more menacing and threatening than we had imagined. And yet they do this with such a precise and even beautiful description of inner and outer reality so as to fascinate us completely. They hold us as their narratives procede in their own incredible ways to an ending which too is forever vague and unclear.
Kafka makes the human soul a startling juxtaposition of anxiety and beauty- in a destiny lost and unclear.
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