The Trial (Legend Classics) - Softcover

Kafka, Franz

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1789559529 ISBN 13: 9781789559521

Publisher: Legend Press, 2021

Synopsis

It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.

A novel of such ambiguity will inevitably lend itself to a diversity of interpretation, but in The Trial you can at least be sure to find every element of storytelling now defined as Kafkaesque.

Josef K., our protagonist, is unexpectedly arrested on the morning of his 30th birthday. The agents who arrest him are unidentified, the agency they work for is unspecified, and the crime for which he has been accused is unknown. When he is released, shortly after, he is told to await further instruction. So begins the manic and emotionless trial of a man beholden to the whims of an unknown force, and his painstaking attempts to find a way out of this existential maze.

The Trial brings into focus the absurdity of life, our universal fear of judgement, and one ultimate question: how much of this endless maze will you explore before you accept the fate life has bestowed upon you?

About this title

About the Author

Kafka left behind explicit instructions in the event of his death: every piece of writing is "to be burned unread". We can only imagine what the landscape of literature would look like today had they followed his request. He is now regarded as one of the most influential writers of the twentieth and twenty-first century, inspiring the likes of W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, J. M. Coetzee, José Saramago, J. D. Salinger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. It is rumoured that Kafka's lover also ignored his request, and secretly kept twenty notebooks and thirty-five letters. Scholars continue to search for them.

Edition details

• Publisher: Legend Press
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1789559529
• ISBN 13: 9781789559521
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224