The Metamorphosis

Gregor Samsa, a travelling salesman who supports his parents and sister, wakes one morning to find himself changed into a monstrous insect. At first he worries about missing his train; then he lies trapped in his room while his horrified family learns to manage without him: his sister brings food, then neglects him, his father wounds him with an apple, and lodgers are taken in to pay the bills. The story never explains the transformation; it watches, with dreadful calm, what it does to love and duty.

Franz Kafka wrote the novella in 1912 and published it in 1915, and it has become the best known of his works. This is Ian Johnston's clear modern translation, read by David Barnes in two and a half hours.