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The Trial

Introduction by George Steiner

Introduction by George Steiner
Translated by Willa Muir, Edwin Muir
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Hardcover
$26.00 US
5.2"W x 8.31"H x 1.01"D   | 17 oz | 12 per carton
On sale Jun 30, 1992 | 344 Pages | 9780679409946
The story of the mysterious indictment, trial, and reckoning forced upon Joseph K—one of the twentieth century’s master parables from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

The Trial reflects the central spiritual crises of modern life. Kafka’s method—one that has influenced, in some way, almost every writer of substance who followed him—was to render the absurd and the terrifying convincing by a scrupulous, hyperreal matter-of-factness of tone and treatment. He thereby imparted to his work a level of seriousness normally associated with civilization’s most cherished poems and religious texts.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.
“This short novel has passed into far more than classical literary status.... Countless are those who have not read it but who are familiar with its main outline and situations...In more than one hundred languages, the epithet ‘kafkaesque’ attaches to the constants of inhumanity and absurdity in our times.... In this diffusion of the kafkaesque into so many recesses of our private and public existence, The Trial plays a commanding role.”
—from the Introduction by George Steiner
© 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 At the end of his life, Kafka asked his lifelong friend and literary executor Max Brod to burn all his unpublished work.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

About

The story of the mysterious indictment, trial, and reckoning forced upon Joseph K—one of the twentieth century’s master parables from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, the author of The Metamorphosis. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

The Trial reflects the central spiritual crises of modern life. Kafka’s method—one that has influenced, in some way, almost every writer of substance who followed him—was to render the absurd and the terrifying convincing by a scrupulous, hyperreal matter-of-factness of tone and treatment. He thereby imparted to his work a level of seriousness normally associated with civilization’s most cherished poems and religious texts.

Everyman's Library pursues the highest production standards, printing on acid-free cream-colored paper, with full-cloth cases with two-color foil stamping, decorative endpapers, silk ribbon markers, European-style half-round spines, and a full-color illustrated jacket. Contemporary Classics include an introduction, a select bibliography, and a chronology of the author's life and times.

Praise

“This short novel has passed into far more than classical literary status.... Countless are those who have not read it but who are familiar with its main outline and situations...In more than one hundred languages, the epithet ‘kafkaesque’ attaches to the constants of inhumanity and absurdity in our times.... In this diffusion of the kafkaesque into so many recesses of our private and public existence, The Trial plays a commanding role.”
—from the Introduction by George Steiner

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