"Franz Kafka 1915 novella of unexplained horror and nightmarish transformation became a worldwide classic and remains a century later one of the most widely read works of fiction in the world. The Metamorphosis is the story of traveling salesman Gregor Samsa, who wakes one morning to find himself transformed into a monstrous insect. In her new translation of Kafka masterpiece, Susan Bernofsky strives to capture both the humor and the humanity in this...

The 'terrible mistake' was the contemporary utilitarian philosophy, expounded in Hard Times (1854) as the Philosophy of Fact by the hard-headed disciplinarian Thomas Gradgrind. But the novel, Dickens's shortest, is more than a polemical tract for the times; the tragic story of Louisa Gradgrind and her father is one of Dickens's triumphs. When Louisa, trapped in a loveless marriage, falls prey to an idle seducer, the crisis forces her father to reconsider...

"Set in Coketown, the fictitious English mill-town modeled after Preston, Hard Times follows the stories of Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy mill owner, his family, and the poor mill workers in the town. The storylines of Gradgrind's children, Louisa, Tom, and Sissy, run parallel to the troubles of the hard workers struggling to survive in a time of severe inequality. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the 1854 first edition, with new edits made...