The Metamorphosis
Franz Kafka · 1915
Literary fictionnovella
Banned in 3 countries
Franz Kafka's novella about travelling salesman Gregor Samsa who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. A cornerstone of 20th-century literature, it gave the language the adjective "Kafkaesque." Kafka — a Czech Jew writing in German — was banned under the Nazis (his three sisters died in the Holocaust). The book was suppressed in Soviet-era Eastern Europe and Franco's Spain.
Bans
| Country | Year | Reasons | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Germany | 1933lifted | PoliticalRacial | ||
| Kafka was Jewish; his works were among those burned on May 10, 1933 and banned under the Third Reich. | ||||
| Spain | 1939lifted | Political | ||
| Banned under Francisco Franco's dictatorship as part of broad censorship of modernist and leftist literature. | ||||
| Soviet Union | 1950lifted | Political | ||
| Kafka's absurdist vision of bureaucratic oppression was officially frowned upon in the USSR for its perceived "pessimism" and lack of socialist realism. | ||||