Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis), 1915
Franz Kafka (1883–1924)
Translated by A. L. Lloyd (New York: Vanguard Press, 1946)
Ink on paper, 1/2 × 6 1/4 × 8 7/8 in. (1.4 × 15.9 × 22.5 cm)
Annotated and retranslated by Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977), ca. 1948–1959
The New York Public Library, New York City, Vladimir Nabokov Papers, Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature, Berg Coll (Nabokov) 00-18

The writer Vladimir Nabokov used this copy of Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis while teaching Russian and European literature at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The book contains Nabokov’s notes, drawings, and translations of the text in the margins. This practice is not new—books and manuscripts are frequently annotated, and multiple translations of a text are sometimes bound together for purposes of comparison. Kept for generations, they become archives when subsequent readers add extra sheets and even small objects. Nabokov’s additions may be viewed as a form of conservation, and it is for these marks as much as the book itself that this item has been preserved.