The Trial

Joseph K. is arrested on his thirtieth birthday. His crime is unknown to him, his captors unidentified. They briefly interrogate K. and let him go but he is told to be at their beck and call for his "trial." He appears before the court now and again but justice is always elusive. His crime is evermore a creepy secret. The proceedings have already started telling on his nerves when he learns that the court has never acquitted anyone-whosoever. Kafka s The Trial is a tour de force into the quagmire of totalitarianism. Its world is Kafkaesque. It is not a parallel world but the same everyday world visible only through Kafka s eyes. The Trial is one of the best novels of the twentieth century.