The trial - Franz Kafka

The Trial is the story of a young man, a bank official, who wakes up in his lodgings one morning to find himself arrested without knowing what wrong he has done; who throughout the story makes various attempts to 'justify himself' against he knows not what charges, and to influence a number of people who, he believes, may effect his acquittal. But what has he done? What is his guilt? Why has he been singled out for judgement?

What the answers to these questions are (whether, indeed, there are answers): this is the engrossing dilemma in which Kafka involves the reader. The result: one of this century's greatest books - a book which perhaps more than any other explores the predicament and the alienation of contemporary humanity.

The new translation, especially commissioned for Picador, has the outstanding merit of adhering with scrupulous fidelity to Kafka's own tone and style, allowing his extraordinary text to create its effects absolutely in its own way.