But when he suggests he might be a dung beetle, I think that’s a very un-Kafka-like thought. SB: Nabokov isn’t wrong in terms of basic measurements. SP: You write in your beautiful afterword to this edition that ‘Kafka wanted us to see Gregor’s new body and condition with the same hazy focus with which Gregor himself discovers them.’ What led you to that realization?

(Think how wings would change this story!) There’s never any indication in the story that he might have wings hidden in his armored back. Kafka’s word Ungeziefer tells us that Gregor’s a bug of an undesirable sort (you wouldn’t use that word for a cute, helpful insect). Susan Bernofsky: If you want to imagine him as a big cockroach, go ahead, but I myself think the vagueness of his insectness is part of his inhuman condition. How did you initially picture the creature, the first time you read The Metamorphosis? Sumanth Prabhaker: I’ve always imagined Gregor as a giant cockroach, but Nabokov describes him as a three-foot beetle. In the leadup to the publication of our Book of Bugs, I reached out to Bernofsky to ask her about Gregor Samsa and the other insects of her reading life. Who among us hasn’t seen the worst of the world reflected back at us in the mirror? Who hasn’t felt the sting of apples on one’s back? Thanks to Bernofsky’s subtle touch, Kafka’s work suddenly felt relatable, nearly private. After years of Richard Dawkins-like grumpiness, I finally revisited Kafka’s The Metamorphosis through Susan Bernofsky’s 2014 translation and discovered it as a whole new creature: sweet, charming, curious, and terrifyingly realistic.

The metamorphosis translation