Novel
The Trial
Der Prozess
Franz Kafka · 1925
Opening lines
Jemand mußte Josef K. verleumdet haben, denn ohne daß er etwas Böses getan hätte, wurde er eines Morgens verhaftet.
Someone must have slandered Josef K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one morning.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from zeno.org
Synopsis
On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Joseph K., a manager in a large bank, is arrested at home by two agents who do not tell him what he is accused of. Yet he is left free to come and go. He tries to see his judges, consults a lawyer, approaches intermediaries, and runs everywhere into an invisible justice that never defines his offence.
Context
Begun in August 1914, worked on until the beginning of 1915 and left unfinished, the novel appeared on 26 April 1925 in Berlin, from Die Schmiede. Max Brod, who had refused to destroy the manuscripts, fixed the order: the chapters and their titles are Kafka's, their arrangement is the editor's, who also set aside a few fragments. The novel contains the parable Before the Law, published separately during the author's lifetime. In French, the first translation, by Alexandre Vialatte, appeared from Gallimard in 1933; in English, that by Willa and Edwin Muir in 1937.
Who it is for
An unfinished novel, whose chapter order is that of its first editor. Several French translations exist, beginning with Vialatte's in 1933.
Prizes and reception
Ranked in 1999 among Le Monde's hundred books of the century; with La Métamorphose, the best-known work by its author.