The Trial

by Franz Kafka

Category: Fiction

Status: Available

Source: Public Domain — Project Gutenberg

About This Book

"The Trial" by Franz Kafka is a novel written in 1914 and 1915. It follows Josef K., a bank clerk who is arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious, unreachable authority. Neither he nor the reader ever learns what crime he has committed. As Josef navigates an absurd legal system filled with bizarre encounters and inexplicable procedures, his case consumes his life while remaining perpetually unresolved. The novel, never completed by Kafka, was published posthumously in 1925. (This is an automatically generated summary.)

About the Author

Czech · 1883–1924

He wrote strange stories about people trapped in odd, confusing worlds. His name is now used to describe any system that feels absurd and hard to deal with.

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Preview

THE TRIAL

Franz Kafka

Chapter One

Arrest--Conversation with Mrs. Grubach--Then Miss Bürstner

Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested. Every day at eight in the morning he was brought his breakfast by Mrs. Grubach's cook--Mrs. Grubach was his landlady--but today she didn't come. That had never happened before. K. waited a little while, looked from his pillow at the old woman who lived opposite and who was watching him with an inquisitiveness quite unusual for her, and finally, both hungry and disconcerted, rang the bell. There was immediately a knock at the door and a man entered. He had ne

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About This Edition

This edition of The Trial by Franz Kafka is catalogued on Libreya under Fiction and runs approximately 83,728 words — about 419 minutes of reading at an average pace. It is sourced from Project Gutenberg, the world's oldest digital library of public domain literature, founded in 1971 by Michael Hart, and every text on Libreya has been verified to be free of copyright restrictions in the United States. You can view the original Project Gutenberg edition here.

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About Classic Fiction

Classic fiction represents the highest achievements of literary imagination. The novels in this genre have shaped how generations of readers understand human nature, society, and the fundamental questions of existence. Reading 19th and early 20th-century novels offers far more than historical interest: these stories explore love, ambition, morality, and identity with an insight that remains startlingly relevant today. Authors like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Austen, Hardy, and Dickens wrote for readers much like us — people trying to make sense of a complicated world — and their observations on class, relationships, power, and conscience carry across centuries with barely diminished force. Classic fiction is also where the novel as an art form reached some of its greatest heights: innovative narrative structures, deeply realized characters, and prose styles that reward slow, attentive reading. These are not museum pieces. They are living works that continue to be discussed, adapted, and argued over because they capture something essential and enduring about human experience.