The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories by Franz Kafka
Kafka is one twisted dude. Seriously. Who thinks of this stuff? And the amazing part is not that he thinks of such bizarre things in the first place but that he then renders them in such amazing detail that you think, “yes, if I turned into a cockroach overnight, it would be exactly like that.”
Some of the works in The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony, and Other Stories are so short and so strange as to be inexplicable. The longer ones are more resonant, most notably the two titles stories, The Stoker, and The Hunger Artist. The Metamorphosis, for all that it’s the best known, wasn’t the best. In the Penal Colony is simultaneously impossible and thoroughly believable. The Hunger Artist is brilliant for accurately chronicling how an unimaginable person would think and feel. In both cases, it seems like something so well described must actually be true.
Like I said, one twisted dude but I’ll read more.