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    The Trial

    3.8 56

    by Kafka, Rupert Degas (Narrated by)

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    Mike Mitchell taught at the universities of Reading and Stirling before becoming a full-time translator.
    Ritchie Robertson is Fellow and Tutor in German at St. John's College, Oxford.

    Table of Contents

    Introductionvii
    Chapter 11
    The Arrest
    Conversation with Frau Grubach
    Then Fraulein Burstner
    Chapter 231
    First Interrogation
    Chapter 349
    In the Empty Courtroom
    The Student
    The Offices
    Chapter 474
    Fraulein Burstner's Friend
    Chapter 583
    The Whipper
    Chapter 691
    K.'s Uncle
    Leni
    Chapter 7113
    Lawyer
    Manufacturer
    Painter
    Chapter 8166
    Block, the Tradesman
    Dismissal of the Lawyer
    Chapter 9197
    In the Cathedral
    Chapter 10223
    The End
    Appendix IThe Unfinished Chapters
    On the Way to Elsa233
    Journey to His Mother235
    Prosecuting Counsel239
    The House245
    Conflict with the Assistant Manager250
    A Fragment256
    Appendix IIThe Passages Delected by the Author257
    Appendix IIIPostscripts
    To the First Edition (1925)264
    To the Second Edition (1935)272
    To the Third Edition (1946)274
    Appendix IVExcerpts from Kafka's Diaries275

    What People are Saying About This

    Albert Camus

    We are taken to the limits of human thought. Indeed, everything in this work is, in the true sense, essential. It states the problem of the absurd in its entirety.

    W.H. Auden

    Had one to name the author who comes nearest to bearing the same kind of relation to our age as Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe bore to theirs, Kafka is the first one would think of.

    Walter Abish

    An accomplishment of the highest order — one that will honor Kafka, perhaps the most singular and compelling writer of our time, far into the 21st century.
    — Author of How German Is It

    Introduction

    This short novel has passed into far more than classical literary status...In more than 100 languages, the epithet 'kafkaesque' attaches to the central images, to the constants of inhumanity and absurdity in our times...In this diffusion of the kafkaesque into so many recesses of our private and public existence, The Trial plays a commanding role.
    — From the Introduction

    .

    From its gripping first sentence onward, this novel exemplifies the term "Kafkaesque." Its darkly humorous narrative recounts a bank clerk's entrapment — based on an undisclosed charge — in a maze of bureaucratic roadblocks. This is the least expensive edition available of one of the 20th century's most important novels.

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    The Barnes & Noble Review
    This classic novel by Kafka tells the terrifying tale of Joseph K., a respectable banker who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. The Trial stands as one of the great novels of modern times, as it rings with a chilling truth about modern bureaucracy and the mad agendas of 20th century totalitarian regimes.
    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.
    — Books of the Century; New York Times review, October 1937
    Library Journal
    An overly pretentious tale with an extensive cast of characters that gathers at the funeral of Hollywood's least favorite producer, West of Paradise suffers from the lack of a centrally solid idea or developed player to hold it together. Neophyte writer Kate Donnelly, who crashes the funeral, is not strong or interesting enough nor blessed with the necessary critical eye to make the novel and its cast work. Davis dares to invoke the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald as Kate's muse, and the only mildly intriguing idea here may be the pretense that she is his long-lost relative. The stereotypes are tired, and the limited plot too predictable. Susan O'Malley's reading is, fortunately, on the brisk side. Not recommended.--Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
    Kirkus Reviews
    The Trial (1924), whose cryptic portrayal of a bank clerk detained and interrogated for an undisclosed offense has become perhaps the dominant image of modernist 'absurdity' — holds up well in a version characterized by long, crowded paragraphs and virtually incantatory accusatory repetitions that confer equal emphasis on the novel's despairing comedy and aura of unspecific menace. Admirers of Kafka's fiction will not want to miss it.

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