The Trial: Introduction by George Steiner

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.