Metamorphic Literature
Explore the best metamorphic literature books that transform storytelling with layered meanings. Discover must-read works blending reality and metaphor in this curated list.
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The Complete Stories
by Franz Kafka
The complete stories of one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis and The Trial. “An important book, valuable in itself and absolutely fascinating. The stories are dreamlike, allegorical, symbolic, parabolic, grotesque, ritualistic, nasty, lucent, extremely personal, ghoulishly detached, exquisitely comic, numinous, and prophetic.” —The New York Times The Complete Stories brings together all of Kafka’s stories, from the classic tales such as “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” and “A Hunger Artist” to shorter pieces and fragments that Max Brod, Kafka’s literary executor, released after Kafka’s death. With the exception of his three novels, the whole of Kafka’s narrative work is included in this volume. “[Kafka] spoke for millions in their new unease; a century after his birth, he seems the last holy writer, and the supreme fabulist of modern man’s cosmic predicament.” —from the Foreword by John Updike
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The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 1
by Robert Musil
Set in Vienna on the eve of World War I, this great novel of ideas tells the story of Ulrich, ex-soldier and scientist, seducer and skeptic, who finds himself drafted into the grandiose plans for the 70th jubilee of the Emperor Franz Josef. This new translation--published in two elegant volumes--is the first to present Musil's complete text, including material that remained unpublished during his lifetime.
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The Man Without Qualities, Vol. 2
by Robert Musil
"Musil belongs in the company of Joyce, Proust, Kafka, and Svevo. . . . (This translation) is a literay and intellectual event of singular importance."--New Republic.
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Confessions of a Mask
by Yukio Mishima
The story of a man coming to terms with his homosexuality in traditional Japanese society has become a modern classic.
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Journey to the End of the Night
by Louis-Ferdinand CĂ©line
Louis-Ferdinand Celine's revulsion and anger at what he considered the idiocy and hypocrisy of society explodes from nearly every page of this novel. Filled with slang and obscenities and written in raw, colloquial language, Journey to the End of the Night is a literary symphony of violence, cruelty and obscene nihilism. This book shocked most critics when it was first published in France in 1932, but quickly became a success with the reading public in Europe, and later in America where it was first published by New Directions in 1952. The story of the improbable yet convincingly described travels of the petit-bourgeois (and largely autobiographical) antihero, Bardamu, from the trenches of World War I, to the African jungle, to New York and Detroit, and finally to life as a failed doctor in Paris, takes the readers by the scruff and hurtles them toward the novel's inevitable, sad conclusion.
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The Family of Pascual Duarte
by Camilo José Cela
This book reflects the crude reality of rural Spain in Franco's time. It is full of human power and rich in social insight. Cela writes with great detail, but still maintains simplicity.
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H.P. Lovecraft Tales
by Howard Phillips Lovecraft
"This volume brings together 22 tales, the very best of [Lovecraft's] fiction"--Jacket.
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The Elementary Particles
by Michel Houellebecq
An international literary phenomenon, The Elementary Particles is a frighteningly original novel–part Marguerite Duras and part Bret Easton Ellis-that leaps headlong into the malaise of contemporary existence. Bruno and Michel are half-brothers abandoned by their mother, an unabashed devotee of the drugged-out free-love world of the sixties. Bruno, the older, has become a raucously promiscuous hedonist himself, while Michel is an emotionally dead molecular biologist wholly immersed in the solitude of his work. Each is ultimately offered a final chance at genuine love, and what unfolds is a brilliantly caustic and unpredictable tale. Translated from the French by Frank Wynne.
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Extinction Journals
by Jeremy Robert Johnson
"You can survive a nuclear blast. All you need is some luck, and maybe a customized business suit coated in cockroaches. It could work. At least that's what Dean believed before the bombs actually dropped and his suit led him to murder a very important man at the foot of a blackened obelisk. Now D.C. is looking awfully empty. Life on Earth is pretty much coming to an end. All of which leaves Dean with a single question-"What now?" The answer to that question will take him on an uncanny voyage across a newly nuclear America where he must confront the problems associated with loneliness, radiation, love, and an ever-evolving cockroach suit with a mind of its own. Dean's bizarre adventures mark the last chronicle of human existence, the final entries in our species' own ..."--Publisher description
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Blood Music
by Greg Bear
Vergil Ulam has created cellular material that can outperform rats in laboratory tests. When the authorities rule that he has exceeded his authorization, Vergil loses his job, but is determined to take his discovery with him.
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The Shadow at the Bottom of the World
by Thomas Ligotti
A collection of favorite horror works includes the title story, in which the author introduces a small town under the siege of an existential darkness; and a variety of additional short works that follow a theme of confronting nightmares. Original.
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