The Trial

The classic, darkly comic novel with “striking parallels to Orwell’s 1984” by the author of The Metamorphosis (The Guardian). Written during the first months of World War I, but still unpublished at the time of author Franz Kafka’s death, The Trial follows the tribulations of a bank clerk named Josef K. When Josef is arrested by two unidentified agents for an unidentified crime, he maintains his innocence while being dragged under the slow wheels of bureaucracy . . . “Kafka’s writing accurately captures the feel of a worker trapped in bureaucratic servitude. In the mind of a bureaucrat, appearances are more important than explanations. Accusations that threaten to ruin lives are looked at frivolously by everyone except the accused. The horror of K’s story in The Trial is he can never quite come to understand what he has done wrong and why it is everyone assumes he will eventually be found guilty.” —Medium “The Trial is deeply thought-provoking in its uncomfortable presentation of a world where people are observed by secret police and suddenly arrested, reflecting the social turmoil in Europe around the time Kafka wrote it in 1914. . . . As such, fans of fiction which presents a disturbingly realistic alternative world ruled by oppression would enjoy The Trial.” —The Guardian