3 Review(s)

Published posthumously in 1925 despite his request to the contrary, German-language novelist Franz Kafka�s The Trial explores the absurdities and anxieties that gradually came to define the twentieth century, including relentless bureaucracy, alienation, authoritarianism and meaninglessness. The text opens with the arrest of a young bank official, Joseph K., on the morning of his 30th birthday for an unspecified crime by unidentified men working for an unnamed agency. Upon his release begins a nightmarish trial with endless court sessions and no resolution in sight, threatening his personal life and relationships. Although incomplete like his other novels, Kafka�s The Trial is replete with the kind of bizarre and nonsensical administrative travesties beyond individual understanding or control that best explain the term �Kafkaesque�, well-known today even to those who are yet to become his readers.