The Trial
Book0 list appearances
The Trial (Der Prozess), written around 1914 and published posthumously in 1925 by Max Brod, is one of Franz Kafka's defining works. It opens with bank officer Josef K. being arrested on his 30th birthday without ever being told the charges, trapping him in an opaque judicial bureaucracy until his execution on the eve of his 31st birthday. The novel became synonymous with modern alienation, bureaucratic absurdity, and the literary anticipation of totalitarianism. Kafka died of tuberculosis in 1924 after instructing his friend and literary executor Max Brod to destroy his unpublished manuscripts; Brod defied that request and arranged The Trial for publication in 1925. Published in Berlin by Verlag Die Schmiede in 1925 (411 pages). Because Kafka left the manuscript unfinished with unnumbered chapters, Brod arranged the chapter sequence for the 1925 edition, sparking decades of textual scholarship over chapter order.
Verified Entity Dossier
Community Weigh-In & Debate
Should The Trial rank in the Top 10 for Book?
Cast your vote to weigh in on The Trial.
Be the first to vote on this ranking.
Structured Facts & Specifications
Verified highlightsAuthor
Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
Canonical Name
The Trial (German: Der Process / Der Prozess)
Key Translations
Breon Mitchell (1998, Schocken Books); Idris Parry (Penguin)
First Publication
1925 (Verlag Die Schmiede, Berlin; 411 pages)
Editor (posthumous)
Max Brod
Node Type / Subclass
Book / Novel (Existentialist / Absurdist Fiction)
Entity ID / Batch Slot
35 (Batch D)
Schema.org / Domain Tags
schema:Book, schema:CreativeWork, Existentialism, TotalitarianismAllegory
Appears in 0 lists
No published list appearances yet.
