The Trial
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Written between 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously in 1925, The Trial is one of Franz Kafka’s most haunting explorations of power, guilt and the absurdity of modern life. Its protagonist, Josef K., is a bank official who finds himself arrested one morning, though no one will tell him what crime he has committed. As he attempts to understand the proceedings against him, he is drawn into a bewildering world of courts, officials and obscure procedures, where authority is everywhere yet never fully visible.
Left unfinished at Kafka’s death, the novel was assembled and published by his friend Max Brod. Its oppressive atmosphere and strange, dark humour give form to the anxieties of an individual confronted by an incomprehensible system, while its reflections on justice, guilt and power have made it one of the defining works of literary modernism. Both an unsettling psychological portrait and a profound parable of bureaucracy, The Trial remains remarkably resonant in its vision of a world governed by rules no one can explain.
From the book
“It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.”
— Franz Kafka, The Trial
On The Trial
“No summary can convey the atmosphere which Kafka cunningly distills.”
— Louis Kronenberger, The New York Times Book Review