The Trial

"Kafka’s nightmare of bureaucracy, guilt, and invisible power — still disturbingly modern."

The Trial is a novel by Franz Kafka, written in 1914 but published posthumously. It tells the terrifying story of Josef K., a bank officer who is arrested one morning by an remote, inaccessible authority for a crime that is never specified. He must navigate an absurd, endless maze of bureaucracy and legal procedures, in a chillingly prophetic critique of totalitarianism and alienation.