It’s certainly not the way Josef K, an ambitious chief clerk of a large bank, thought he’d be celebrating his thirtieth birthday: with two unnamed “agents” bursting into his apartment. K is arrested—but the agents won’t say of what crime he’s accused. The undisputed master of twentieth-century alienation, Franz Kafka spins in The Trial a tale as terrifying as it is mysterious. The novel so captured the contemporary mind that the word “Kafkaesque” was coined—and gained currency far beyond the author’s readership—to describe situations that echo Josef K’s: hopeless struggles against obdurate or surreal bureaucracies, with no opportunity afforded the victim to escape the system.
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