The Trial in English

FRAGMENTS B.’s Friend In the days that followed K. found it impossible to speak to Fräulein Bürstner at all, even to exchange a few words with her. He tried all sorts of different ways of approaching her, but she always managed to avoid contact with him. He would come straight home from work and stay in his room with the light off, sitting on the sofa doing noth- ing but keep the hall under observ...

In the Cathedral K. was given the task of showing a very important Italian business associate of the bank, who was visiting the city for the first time, some of its artistic treasures. It was a task which at any other time he would have regarded as an honour. Now, however, at a time when it was taking all his effort to maintain his reputation in the bank, he accepted it reluctantly

Block, the Corn Merchant · The Dismissal of the Lawyer K. had finally decided to take his case out of the lawyer’s hands. He couldn’t entirely rid himself of doubts as to whether this was the correct course of action, but they were outweighed by his conviction that it was necessary. On the day he intended to visit the lawyer his decision had severely reduced his capacity for work, he had to stay v...

The Lawyer · The Factory-Owner · The Painter One winter’s morning — outside snow was falling in the murky light — K. was in his office, feeling extremely tired already despite the early hour. In order to prevent himself from at least being disturbed by the clerks, he’d told the messenger not to let any of them in, because he was occupied with an important piece of work.

His Uncle · Leni One afternoon — it was just before the post was due to go, and K. was very busy — his Uncle Karl, a small landowner from the country, pushed his way into the room between two messengers who were bringing documents.

The Thrasher As K. was going along the corridor from his office to the main stairs one evening soon afterwards — on that day he was almost the last to leave, there were just two messengers still working in dispatch in the little circle of light from a lamp — he heard groans coming from behind a door where he had always assumed, without having actually seen it himself, that there was nothing but a...

In the Empty Conference Hall The Student · The Offices During the next week K. waited daily for a new appointment. He could not believe they had taken his rejection of hearings literally, and when the expected notification had not arrived by Saturday evening, he assumed there was a tacit summons to be in the same building at the same time. So he returned there on the Sunday, going straight up the...

The First Hearing K. had been informed by telephone that a short hearing in his affair would take place the next Sunday. He was advised that these hear- ings would now proceed regularly, if not every week perhaps, then certainly at fairly frequent intervals.

During that spring K. used to spend his evenings whenever possible — he generally stayed in the office until nine o’clock — going for a short walk after work by himself or with friends and then to an inn, where he normally sat with some mostly older men at their regular table until eleven. There were, however, exceptions to this routine, for example when the bank manager, who valued his dili- genc...

The Arrest Someone must have been telling tales about Josef K., for one morning, without having done anything wrong, he was arrested.* Frau Grubach’s cook, who brought him his breakfast at around eight every day, did not appear.

Ever since Aeschylus’ Oresteia, the motif of the trial has been fun- damental to literature. Ideally, the trial serves to bring the truth to light and to assign people their just deserts. In practice, literature questions and complicates this simple conception of a trial.