The Trial: A New 2023 Translation

Franz Kafka

Newcomb Livraria Press

About this ebook

A new 2023 translation into American English of Kafka's 1915 "Das Schloß" with an afterword by the translator.

This is volume I in the Complete Works of Kafka by Livraria Press.

Franz Kafka's first novel, The Trial, is a disturbing and thought-provoking work that tells the story of Josef K., a man who is arrested and tried for an unknown crime. The novel explores themes of guilt, injustice and the search for meaning in a world that seems to be controlled by forces beyond our understanding. The underlying philosophy of The Trial mimics Schopenhauer's pessimistic and hopeless outlook. Kafka's novel is a bleak commentary on the human condition, in which individuals are at the mercy of forces beyond their control. The characters are caught in a labyrinth of bureaucracy aimed at keeping them in the dark and preventing them seeking the truth. The novel's suggestion is that we are all caught in a similar web of confusion and despair, and that our search for meaning and understanding is doomed to failure.

About the author

A Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, Kafka's work, which fuses elements of realism and the fantastic, typically features isolated protagonists facing bizarre or surrealistic predicaments and incomprehensible socio-bureaucratic powers. His writings, such as "The Metamorphosis" and "The Trial," explore themes of alienation, existential anxiety, and guilt, and are influential in modernist literature.