The Trial

Until now, students have been able to read Kafka’s masterpiece only in a translation of the 1925 German edition that was edited by Max Brod (Kafka’s friend and literary executor), from an unfinished manuscript. Both Brod's edition and its 1937 translation by Will and Edwin Muir have long been considered flawed.

This new edition is based upon the widely acclaimed work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it. In this brilliant translation, Breon Mitchell masterfully reproduces the distinctive poetics of Kafka's prose, revealing a novel that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written. Translated and with a Preface by Breon Mitchell.

“Breon Mitchell’s translation of the restored text is an accomplishment of the highest order—one that will honor Kafka, perhaps the most singular and compelling writer of our time, far into the twenty-first century.” —Walter Abish, author of How German Is It?

“The Trial...holds up well in [this] version characterized by...virtually incantatory accusatory repetitions that confer equal emphasis on the novel’s despairing comedy and aura of unspecific menace. Admirers of Kafka's fiction will not want to miss it.”—Kirkus Reviews