KAFKA, Franz

[340] pp.

Alfred A Knopf

1957

7 7/8″ x 5 1/4″

Jacket design by George Salter

Definitive Edition. August 1957

VG/ VG

The Trial (German: Der Process, previously Der Proce, Der Proze and Der Prozess) is a novel written by Franz Kafka in 1914 and 1915 and published posthumously on 26 April 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of Josef K., a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka’s two other novels, The Castle and Amerika, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which appears to bring the story to an intentionally abrupt ending.