Der Process

Someone must have slandered Josef K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one morning. Thus begins the story of Josef K., who is to be put on trial by a mysterious authority on his 30th birthday. The more he tries to defend his innocence, the deeper he sinks into the thicket of opaque laws and human confusions. Josef K. ultimately has to realize that the meaning of this vast organization, this corrupt gang, the meaning of this mysterious trial is absurdity. "The Trial," Franz Kafka's first novel, written between 1914 and 1915 and first published in 1925, remains fragmented but is nonetheless a significant work of world literature. Its importance for the 20th century cannot be overstated: for the trial that Josef K. must endure is also a trial that he—innocent and guilty—must conduct against himself and ultimately lose.