The Trial

Kafka's posthumous nightmare: Josef K. is arrested one morning without being told his crime or his court.

Specifications & Metrics

author

Franz Kafka

type

Modernist novel

era

Modernism (1925, posthumous)

language

German

setting

An unnamed city

parts

10 chapters

Relative Scale in Novels

Core Principles & Analysis

• Kafka left it unfinished; Max Brod published it in 1925 against his instructions to burn it.
• 'Before the Law', the parable of the doorkeeper, stands at its center.
• Its unfinished chapters resist any settled reading of Josef K.'s guilt.

Sources

• Wikipedia: The Trial