'It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of that work that it offers everything and confirms nothing' - Albert Camus
Written in 1914, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.
'No other voice has borne truer witness to the dark of our times... The Trial exhibits the classic model of the terror state. It prefigures the furtive sadism, the hysteria which totalitarianism insinuates into private and sexual life, the faceless boredom of the killers. The Labyrinth of his meanings opens out, at its secret, difficult exits, to the high roads of modern sensibility, to what is most urgent and relevant in our condition' - George Steiner
