The Metamorphosis, by Franz Kafka, trans. Stanley Corngold (Norton, £4.95 in UK)

Norton Critical Editions are wonderful value, containing as they do not only richly annotated texts, but essays on background and context. One experiences a jolt in the first line of this translation: the creature Gregor Samsa turns into is described as "a monstrous vermin". Corngold argues strongly for the word, but Nabokov, for one, would not have agreed (the latter even disagreed with the usual title, preferring The Transformation). The tale itself, of course, remains as compelling, as frightening, and as moving as ever.