The Trial: The Definitive Edition

The Trial tells the terrifying tale of Joseph K., a respectable functionary in a bank who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential take, a parable, or a prophecy, this hauntingly believable story stands out as one of the great novels of our times. Kafka's unsurpassed nightmare vision rings with chilling truth as it foreshadows the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the mad agendas of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes.

This definitive edition includes Kafka's own drawings as well as excerpts from his diaries during the period in which he wrote The Trial.

Books of the Century; New York Times review, October 1937 - Louis Kronenberger

The Trial is not for everybody, and its peculiar air of excitement will seem flat enough to those who habitually feed on 'exciting' books. It belongs not with the many novels that horrify, but with the many fewer which terrify.

Franz Kafka was one of the most significant and influential fiction writers of the 20th century. Dark, absurdist, and existential, his stories and novels concern the struggles of troubled individuals to survive in an impersonal, bureaucratic world.