num_pages: 276
description: The story of The Trial's publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself. Kafka intended his parable of alienation in a mysterious bureaucracy to be burned, along with the rest of his diaries and manuscripts, after his death in 1924. Yet his friend Max Brod pressed forward to prepare The Trial and the rest of his papers for publication. When the Nazis came to power, publication of Jewish writers such as Kafka was forbidden; Kafka's writings, many of which have distinctively Jewish themes, did not find a broad audience until after World War II. (Hannah Arendt once observed that although "during his lifetime he could not make a decent living, [Kafka] will now keep generations of intellectuals both gainfully employed and well-fed.") Among the current crop of Kafka heirs is Breon Mitchell, the translator of this edition of The Trial. Rather than tidying up Kafka's unconventional grammar and punctuation (as previous translators have done), Mitchell captures the loose, uneasy, even uncomfortable constructions of Kafka's original story. His translation technique is the only way to convey the comedy and confusion of this narrative, in which Josef K., "without having done anything truly wrong," is arrested, tried, convicted and executed--on a charge that is never disclosed to him. --Michael Joseph Gross
language: English
title: The Trial
titlecomplete: The Trial
characters: Willem, Erna K., Josef K., Fräulein Bürstner, Albert K., Titorelli, Frau Grubach, Leni, Rudi Block, Fräulein Elsa, Karl K., Herr Huld, Franz
genres: Fiction, 20th Century, Czech Literature, Classics, Philosophy, Dystopia, German Literature, Literary Fiction, Literature, Novels
ratings_count: 306361
awards: awardedAt: 915177600000
name: Helen and Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize
category: Breon Mitchell
publisher: Schocken