On April 27, 2025, The Trial, the first of the so-called "long works" written by Franz Kafka, was published. It was published posthumously, as Kafka had died the previous year. The publication of this novel, like Kafka's other novels, was not planned. Before his death, Kafka commissioned his great friend Max Brod to set fire to his entire oeuvre. Brod, far from fulfilling Kafka's last wish, personally took charge of editing and publishing all his writings. It is thanks to him that we, the readers, were able to know the work of this great writer.
As for the Process, this is a work that Kafka left unfinished. So Brod had to edit it in such a way that the ending would make sense. The novel centers on the life of Joseph K, a man who is accused of a crime about which he has no information. Even to us as readers this mystery about K's guilt is not revealed at any point.
Through this work, Kafka seeks to make a critique of the Western judicial system, which with its bureaucracy and its gray officials seeks to depersonalize the accused, dehumanizing them. At the beginning of the play, Joseph K is arrested, after being informed of his prosecution. All this takes place to the stupefaction of K, who maintains that he would not have committed any crime, so he would surely have been slandered by someone else.
This book clearly demonstrates what later became known as the Kafkaesque nightmare, that is, a situation characterized by crushing bureaucratic oppression, accompanied by the alienation and despair caused, in this case, by being prosecuted for a crime of which one has no information. An absurd situation, which has no possible explanation other than the poor performance of the judicial bureaucracy.
Even Joseph K's full name is unknown to us, an interesting aspect of the work, as it demonstrates the way in which Kafka seeks to show the depersonalization that justice performs with respect to the individuals who must go through this system.
Kafka's dislike of the judicial system and bureaucracy in general stems from several motives. One could interpret Kafka's hostility to bureaucratic agents as being related to the fact that he himself worked for several years in an insurance company, while writing in his spare time. In fact, the term Kafkaesque often refers to the hell that comes with having to do an excessive amount of "desk work," which surely has to do with his job.
The Trial is, without a doubt, one of the indispensable works to understand the twentieth century. Kafka's meticulous analysis of the injustice of the judicial system takes on greater relevance in a context where in many parts of the world extrajudicial detentions and inconducive trials are the order of the day.
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