The Trial

A novel about the last year of the life of Joseph K., caught in the gears of a dull and merciless judicial machine, is an unflattering portrait of bureaucracy, familiar to readers of the 21st century no less than to Franz Kafka's contemporaries, and a metaphor for monotonous human life devoid of joy, love, and meaning. The bank manager K. is on trial, but for what is unclear. The hero is unable to achieve justice, cannot distinguish manipulation from genuine warmth, and conscientiousness from the arbitrariness of officials, accepting his absurd condition as a given until his last breath. The new translation of "The Trial," carried out by Leonid Bershidsky, is supplemented by fragments of Franz Kafka's drafts, previously unpublished in the context of the novel. It reconstructs the chronology of K.'s misfortunes and masterfully conveys the tone of the original text: "rough, sometimes overly formal, slightly shy German of the brilliant Prague Jew."