The story itself, Kafka's most famous, hardly needs describing - a travelling salesman, Gregor Samsa, wakes up one morning to find he has been transformed into an enormous bug - but Faber Finds is offering something rare, the very first English translation which has been out of print for over sixty years.
This pioneering translation by A. L. Lloyd was first published in 1937. A. L. Lloyd was multi-talented: ethnomusicologist, journalist, radio and television broadcaster, and translator. In this his centenary year (2008) Faber Finds is celebrating him in his first and last roles. His major work, Folk Song in England, is being reissued as are his Lorca and Kafka translations. As well as both being published in 1937 both were firsts; has anyone else had Spanish and German translations published in the same year?
It should also be mentioned that A. L. Lloyd was a lifelong communist. It is a delicious irony therefore that one of the first reviews of the Kafka was by Evelyn Waugh in the short-lived Night and Day; it was a good one too.