One morning, when Gregor Samsa woke from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a horrible vermin.

He lay on his back, as if in armour, and if he lifted his head a little he could see his brown belly, slightly domed and divided by arches into stiff sections. The bedding was barely able to cover it and seemed ready to slide off at any moment.

His many legs, pitifully thin compared with the size of the rest of him, swung about helplessly as he watched. 'What has happened to me?', he thought. It was not a dream. His room, a proper human room albeit a little cramped, lay peacefully between its four familiar walls.

A collection of textile samples lay spread out on the table – Samsa was a travelling salesman – and above it there hung a picture that he had recently cut out of an illustrated magazine and housed in a nice, gilded frame. The painting showed a lady wearing a fur hat and fur boa, sitting upright, raising a heavy fur muff that covered her entire forearm towards the viewer. Gregor then turned and looked out the window at the cloudy weather. Drops