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The Trial

Franz Kafka

The Trial

Paper book: €30.99

Digital: €13.99

Original publication
1925
Pages
616
Difficulty
Hard
Genres
Philosophy, Psychology
Moods
Get the chills, Think it through, Understand myself
Translated from
German

Book summary

One morning, Josef K., a senior bank official, is arrested at home without knowing why. Yet he is left free to go to work. The court trying him sits in suburban attics cluttered with files, and no one can tell him what he is accused of.

Kafka had asked his friend Max Brod to burn this novel after his death, along with his other manuscripts. Max Brod refused. The word “Kafkaesque”, for any absurd situation where you get lost in rules and offices, comes largely from this book.

With its strange, sometimes almost comic scenes, and the translation always in front of you, the novel reads well in the language you are learning.

The plot

He searches for the court that is trying him. Josef K., a senior clerk at a large bank, is accused without being told of what. He is summoned to court, but no one tells him the time or the floor. When he finally finds…

The world of the book

A large city in Central Europe. The novel never names its city. It has trams and telephones. The hero, Josef K., works at a bank, where he has a large office with an enormous window over the square.

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