The Trial

Franz Kafka · 1925 CE · Novel · German · Modernist

A senior bank clerk is arrested one morning by officials who will not say what he is charged with, and is left free to go on working. He hires a lawyer, consults a painter, petitions clerks in attic offices, and never reaches the court that has him. Guilt without a crime; a bureaucracy both everywhere and impossible to reach.

Open The Trial in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Lineage

• companion to ↑ In the Penal Colony
  Franz Kafka · 1919 CE · Short Story
• ↓ Catch-22
  Joseph Heller · 1961 CE · Novel — influenced by this
• ↓ The Trial
  Orson Welles · 1962 CE · Film — adapts this

Attributes

Closest analogues

• The Castle
  Franz Kafka · 1926 CE · Novel

  64% · 14 shared
  NovelAllegoryPoliticalIndividual vs SocietyIsolation & AlienationModernistEverymanCircularThe LabyrinthThe Thresholdvs SocietyAbsurdistIronicGerman
• Waiting for the Barbarians
  J. M. Coetzee · 1980 CE · Novel

  51% · 10 shared
  NovelAllegoryPoliticalGuilt & ConscienceJustice & RevengeEverymanScapegoatFall (Tragedy)The Thresholdvs Society
• The Trial
  Orson Welles · 1962 CE · Film

  49% · 8 shared
  AllegoryIndividual vs SocietyGuilt & ConscienceIsolation & AlienationEverymanThe Labyrinthvs SocietyAbsurdist
• The Ox-Bow Incident
  William A. Wellman · 1943 CE · Film

  49% · 8 shared
  PoliticalIndividual vs SocietyGuilt & ConscienceJustice & RevengeEverymanScapegoatvs SocietyIronic
• The Crucible
  Arthur Miller · 1953 CE · Play

  49% · 8 shared
  PoliticalIndividual vs SocietyGuilt & ConscienceJustice & RevengeEverymanScapegoatFall (Tragedy)vs Society
• Untouchable
  Mulk Raj Anand · 1935 CE · Novel

  47% · 10 shared
  NovelPoliticalIndividual vs SocietyIsolation & AlienationModernistEverymanScapegoatThe Thresholdvs SocietyIronic