The Trial: A New Translation Based on the Restored Text

by Franz Kafka, Breon Mitchell (Translator), Arthur H. Samuelson (Editor)

Overview

Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century: the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.

In his brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780805209990
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/25/1999
Series:	The Schocken Kafka Library
Pages:	304
Sales rank:	5,927
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 8.02(h) x 0.66(d)
Lexile:	1150L (what's this?)
Age Range:	14 - 18 Years

About the Author

Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.

Breon Mitchell has received the ATA German Literary Prize, among other translation awards. He is a professor of Germanic studies and comparative literature at Indiana University.

Date of Birth:

July 3, 1883

Date of Death:

June 3, 1924

Place of Birth:

Prague, Austria-Hungary

Place of Death:

Vienna, Austria

Education:

German elementary and secondary schools. Graduated from German Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague.

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

Editorial Reviews

"Kafka's 'legalese' is alchemically fused with a prose of great verve and intense readability."
—James Rolleston, professor of Germanic languages and literatures, Duke University

"Breon Mitchell's translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century."
—Walter Abish, author of How German Is It

From the Publisher

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.

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

Louis Kronenberger

Kafka's final work was left unfinished at the time of his 1924 death, and the original 1925 and subsequent editions were edited according to the standards of the day. This edition endeavors to restore the text as closely as possible to the original manuscript. According to the publisher, "This translation makes slight changes in the chapter divisions and sequence of chapter fragments." In addition to the text, this volume includes a bibliography and a chronology of the author's life.

Library Journal

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.

Kirkus Reviews