Metamorphosis

Franz Kafka's 1915 novella — in which Gregor Samsa wakes to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect — the most widely read work of European modernist fiction and the definition of the adjective 'Kafkaesque.'

Creates the Kafkaesque — Metamorphosis's technique (treating an impossible transformation as a domestic inconvenience; the family's adjustment to their son's monstrousness; his eventual death and their relief) is the model for literary absurdism that uses impossibility to illuminate real psychological and social dynamics.