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    The Trial

    Author Franz Kafka
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    Paperback
    $17.00 US
    Knopf | Schocken
    5.14"W x 7.98"H x 0.66"D  
    On sale Mar 28, 1995 | 320 Pages | 9780805210408
    Grades 6-12 + AP/IB
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    The Trial tells the terrifying tale of Joseph K., a respectable functionary in a bank who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy, this hauntingly believable story stands out as one of the great novels of our times. This edition includes Kafka's own drawings, as well as excerpts from his diaries during the period in which he wrote this book. With an Introduction by George Steiner; translated from the German by Willa and Edwin Muir; revised and with additional material translated by E.M. Butler.
    © Courtesy of Schocken Books

    FRANZ KAFKA was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.

    View titles by Franz Kafka
    “‘[I]t seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.’ With these words The Trial ends. Kafka’s shame then is no more personal than the life and thought which govern it and which he describes thus: ‘He does not live for the sake of his own life, he does not think for the sake of his own thought. He feels as though he were living and thinking under the constraint of a family . . . Because of this unknown family . . . he cannot be released.’”
    —Walter Benjamin
     
    “Breon Mitchell’s translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century.”
    —Walter Abish, author of How German Is It

    About

    The Trial tells the terrifying tale of Joseph K., a respectable functionary in a bank who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy, this hauntingly believable story stands out as one of the great novels of our times. This edition includes Kafka's own drawings, as well as excerpts from his diaries during the period in which he wrote this book. With an Introduction by George Steiner; translated from the German by Willa and Edwin Muir; revised and with additional material translated by E.M. Butler.

    Author

    © Courtesy of Schocken Books

    FRANZ KAFKA was born in 1883 in Prague, where he lived most of his life. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, including “The Metamorphosis,” “The Judgment,” and “The Stoker.” He died in 1924, before completing any of his full-length novels. At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work. Brod overrode those wishes.

    View titles by Franz Kafka

    Praise

    “‘[I]t seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.’ With these words The Trial ends. Kafka’s shame then is no more personal than the life and thought which govern it and which he describes thus: ‘He does not live for the sake of his own life, he does not think for the sake of his own thought. He feels as though he were living and thinking under the constraint of a family . . . Because of this unknown family . . . he cannot be released.’”
    —Walter Benjamin
     
    “Breon Mitchell’s translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century.”
    —Walter Abish, author of How German Is It

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