The Breast is the first novel in Roth's Kepesh Trilogy. It is about a comparative literature professor, David Allan Kepesh, of Stony Brook who was transformed into a 155-pound breast. The novel alluded to characters Gregor Samsa of Kafka's Metamorphosis and Kovalyov of Nikolai Gogol's The Nose, and to the literary masterpiece of Swift, Gulliver's Travels. Part exploration of the professor's bodily desires and part delusion, the novel merges the illusion of carnal desires and the transformative imagery, sometimes satirical, of literature.