The Trial, Definitive Edition

by Kafka, Franz

Description

Schocken, 1981. Over 282 tight pp; underlines in pencil found only on p 4; edge & cover soil & foxing; ow clean. Edgewear mainly at spine ends & hinges. Creased covers: shadows of 3 men walking on a pavement in Prague. First page has reproduction of author's signature. First pub in German; trans by Willa & Edwin Muir; revised with 4 appendices. . Reprint, 18th Ptg Thus. Trade Paperback. Very Good. Illus. by Author. No BC, RM, XL Marks.

Book summary

Kafka's exploration of the psychological terror inherent in everyday life is both allegorical and stunningly realistic. A bank employee named Joseph K. is accused of a crime he not only did not commit but doesn't even understand. He is released, but thereafter enslaved to a legal system that requires him to continue to go to court to defend his innocence in a case that is never explained, never resolved. Try though he may to take control of the situation, the hero's life, revealed in all its barrenness, disintegrates not only at the bank where he works but in his relationship with a young woman and with his landlady. Finally, in a last absurd twist, he is executed. Kafka expressed the wish that THE TRIAL never be published, but thanks to the intervention of his literary executor, Max Brod, it appeared posthumously. It is considered a classic of modernist literature, an early existential work that has had enormous influence on most serious 20th-century writers.