Recommendations
Books Like The Metamorphosis
What to read after The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka
Franz Kafka's The Metamorphosis (1915) is one of the most startling and unforgettable openings in literature — Gregor Samsa transformed into a monstrous insect, his family's horror and adjustment, his slow death. If you were drawn to its compressed intensity and its portrait of alienation made literal, these works will find you in the same territory.
- 1Buy
The Trial
by Franz Kafka
The natural companion — Josef K. arrested without explanation and unable to discover what he is accused of; the full-length novel version of what The Metamorphosis does in a novella: a man destroyed by a system he cannot understand or escape; the most widely taught Kafka text alongside The Metamorphosis
- 2Buy
The Castle
by Franz Kafka
K. arrives in a village and can never gain access to the Castle that supposedly employs him — Kafka's longest novel and the most fully developed version of the bureaucratic maze; unfinished at his death; for readers who want to go deeper into Kafka after The Metamorphosis
- 3Buy
Nausea
by Jean-Paul Sartre
Roquentin in a provincial French town, afflicted by the sudden visceral contingency of existence — the existentialist companion to The Metamorphosis; where Gregor's transformation is external and inexplicable, Roquentin's is internal and philosophical, but both novels are about a man's experience of his own existence becoming unbearable
- 4Buy
The Stranger
by Albert Camus
Meursault, who kills an Arab on a beach and cannot explain why — the most accessible existentialist novel and the clearest companion to Kafka in its portrait of a man who cannot connect his inner life to the world's expectations; shorter even than The Metamorphosis and a natural next step
- 5Buy
Notes from Underground
by Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Underground Man arguing against rationalism from his underground room — the nineteenth-century predecessor to The Metamorphosis; both are portraits of a man whose interiority makes him impossible to live with; Dostoevsky's novella is the most compressed and strange of his works and the one most like Kafka in tone
- 6Buy
The Tin Drum
by Günter Grass
Oskar Matzerath, who decides at age three to stop growing, narrates the history of Danzig through the Nazi period — the magic-realist response to Kafka; where Gregor is transformed into something inhuman against his will, Oskar's transformation is willed; both use a fantastic premise to examine what ordinary society looks like from outside
- 7Buy
The Remains of the Day
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Stevens, an English butler who gave his life to his profession and realizes too late what he has missed — Ishiguro's Booker Prize-winning novel is the realist version of The Metamorphosis's central subject: what happens when a person's identity is entirely their professional function, and what is left when that function is removed
- 8Buy
Invisible Man
by Ralph Ellison
A Black man in America who is literally invisible to the white world around him — Ellison is working in the same tradition as Kafka: using a fantastic or semi-fantastic premise (invisibility that is social and psychological rather than literal) to examine the experience of a person who cannot be seen as fully human by the system he lives in
More The Metamorphosis Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.