The Trial

From its gripping first sentence onward, this novel exemplifies the term "Kafkaesque." Its darkly humorous narrative recounts a bank clerk's entrapment in a bureaucratic maze, based on an undisclosed charge.

A native of Prague, Franz Kafka (1883-1924) worked for an insurance company by day and wrote his tales of alienation and social anxiety in private. Like the majority of the author's work, The Trial was published after his untimely death from tuberculosis.