The Trial

One morning Josef K., a senior clerk at a bank, is arrested in his lodgings by two warders who tell him nothing of the charge and leave him free to go to work. The case proceeds without being explained to him, in the attic of a suburban tenement where a court sits among piles of files. K. consults an ailing lawyer, a painter who lives off the judges, and a tradesman swallowed by his own case. Every step draws him deeper into an administration no one has seen the top of. Published after Kafka's death, the novel examines guilt and authority.