The Trial

Josef K. is arrested on the morning of his thirtieth birthday. He does not know what crime he is charged with. No one will tell him. The court that will try him operates by rules he cannot access, in locations he cannot reliably find, according to a logic that responds to no argument he is capable of making. His efforts to understand and contest his situation — rational, persistent, and progressively futile — constitute one of the most sustained and most precise descriptions of institutional power and individual powerlessness in literature.

Kafka’s The Trial, left unfinished at his death and published posthumously, has been read as bureaucratic satire, as Kafkaesque nightmare, as theological allegory, and as prophetic anticipation of the totalitarian state. It is all of these — and also one of the most formally extraordinary novels of the twentieth century, its dark comedy and genuine terror perfectly balanced.

This Penguin Modern Classics edition provides the authoritative text with a substantial introduction. Essential world literature. Published by Penguin Modern Classics.