弗兰兹·卡夫卡（Franz Kafka，1883-1924），奥匈帝国捷克德语小说家。他出生于犹太商人家庭，18岁进入布拉格大学学习文学和法律，1904年开始写作生涯。卡夫卡与法国作家马塞尔·普鲁斯特、爱尔兰作家詹姆斯·乔伊斯并称为西方现代主义文学的先驱。代表作有《审判》《城堡》《变形记》等。

精彩片段

As Gregor Samsa woke one morning from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed into some kind of monstrous vermin. He lay on his hard, armour-like back, and if he lifted his head a little, he could see his curved brown abdomen, divided by arch-shaped ridges, and domed so high that the bedspread, on the brink of slipping off, could hardly stay put. His many legs, miserably thin in comparison with his size otherwise, flickered helplessly before his eyes.

‘What has happened to me?’ he thought. It was not a dream. His room, a proper, human being’s room, rather too small, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls. Above the table, on which his collection of textile samples was spread -- Samsa was a commercial traveller -- there hung the picture he had recently cut out from an illustrated magazine and mounted in a pretty gilded frame. It showed a lady posed sitting erect, attired in a fur hat and fur boa, and raising a heavy fur muff, which swallowed her arm right up to the elbow, towards the viewer.

Gregor’s gaze then turned towards the window, and the murky weather -- one could hear the raindrops striking the window-sill -- made him quite melancholy. ‘What if I went on sleeping for a while and forgot all these idiocies,’ he thought, but that was quite impossible, as he was used to sleeping on his right side and in his present state he was unable to get himself into this position. However energetically he flung himself onto his right side, whenever he did so he would rock onto his back again. He must have tried a hundred times, shutting his eyes so that he didn’t have to see his jittery legs, and he only gave over when he began to feel a slight ache in his side, something he had never felt before.

词汇学习

transform

vt. 改变，变换；使改观；变压；转化；改造，改革

abdomen

n. 腹部

dome

n. 圆屋顶，拱顶

commercial

adj. 商业的，商务的，贸易的

n. 广告

jittery

adj. 神经过敏的；战战兢兢的；紧张不安的

（单词注释来自有道词典）

馆藏中译本

《变形记》

（奥）卡夫卡著；张荣昌译

上海译文出版社有限公司, 2025

索书号：I521.45/333

《变形记 : 卡夫卡短篇小说选》

（奥）弗朗茨·卡夫卡著；赵登荣译

译林出版社，2024

索书号：I521.45/323

拓展阅读

《卡夫卡谈话录》

（奥）弗朗茨·卡夫卡(Franz Kafka)口述；（捷）古斯塔夫·雅诺施(Gustav Janouch)记述；赵登荣译

译林出版社，2024

索书号：K835.215.6=51/43

1920年的一个夏日，热爱文学的少年雅诺施被父亲引荐给《变形记》的作者卡夫卡，两人结下深厚友谊，他们的对话无所不包。本书正是卡夫卡与雅诺施的对谈记录。这是一部足以媲美《歌德谈话录》的杰作，真实记录了卡夫卡晚年的生活状态，他的话语中直接体现着他对世间万事万物的真知灼见，一个情感饱满、形象立体的真实的卡夫卡立于眼前。

Narrativity, Coherence and Literariness： a Theoretical Approach with Analyses of Laclos, Kafka and Toussaint

Eva Sabine Wagner

De Gruyter，2020

Call No.: I045/W132

The search for the defining qualities of narrative has produced an expansive range of definitions which, largely unconnected with each other, obscure the notion of “narrativity” rather than clarifying it. The first part of this study remedies this shortcoming by developing a graded macro model of narrativity which serves three aims. The second part of this study identifies three different narrative dynamics which caracterise Laclos’s, Kafka’s and Toussaint’s novels. This book provides a long overdue systematisation of the jumbled field of theories of narrativity and opens new perspectives on the difficult relationship between narrative theory and interpretation.返回搜狐，查看更多