The Trial

At a Glance

Josef K., a bank official, wakes on his thirtieth birthday to find himself arrested by two warders who cannot explain the charge. He is never told what crime he committed, never permitted to examine the charges against him, never granted a proper hearing, and spends the rest of the year trying to find someone — a lawyer, a painter, a prison chaplain — who can help him navigate a court system that exists in attics, operates on incomprehensible rules, and has apparently already decided his fate. On the eve of his thirty-first birthday, two men in frock coats arrive, lead him to a quarry, and stab him to death. His last words are 'Like a dog.'

Why This Book Matters

Published posthumously in 1925, the novel was largely unknown until totalitarianism made it prescient. By the 1940s and 1950s, The Trial had become the central text for understanding how modern states persecute individuals: the Stalinist show trial, the Nazi bureaucracy of extermination, the Kafkaesque machinery of Cold War surveillance all seemed to be the system Kafka had described. The word 'Kafkaesque' entered multiple languages to describe exactly the phenomenon the novel depicts. It is now considered one of the four or five most important novels of the twentieth century.

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