The Trial
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Josef K. is an employee at a bank, an Everyman without any particular qualities or ambitions. His inconsequence makes doubly strange his тАЬarrestтАЭ by an officer of the court, made with no formal charges or explanation. Disoriented and consumed with guilt for a тАЬcrimeтАЭ he does not understand, Josef K. must justify his life to a тАЬcourtтАЭ with which he cannot communicate. The defendant can only ask questions, but receives no answers to clarify the surreal world in which he is compelled to wander.
Through the courtтАЩs relentless bureaucratic proceedings and absurd juxtapositions of different hypotheses of cause and effect, the whole rational structure of the world is undermined. The trial of Josef K. becomes a chilling existential metaphor for life itself, where every sentence is a sentence of death.
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Franz Kafka (1883тАУ1924), one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century, was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing, much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously, is considered by some people to be among the most influential in Western literature, inspiring such writers as Albert Camus, Rex Warner, and Samuel Beckett.
Breon Mitchell is a professor of Germanic studies and comparative literature and the director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University. He was awarded the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Uwe TimmтАЩs Morenga in 2004.
Geoffrey Howard (a.k.a. Ralph Cosham) (1936тАУ2014) was a British journalist who changed careers to become a narrator and screen and stage actor. He performed in more than one hundred professional theatrical roles. His audiobook narrations were named тАЬAudio Best of the YearтАЭ by Publishers Weekly, and he won seven AudioFile Earphones Awards, and in 2013 he won the coveted Audie Award for Best Mystery Narration for his reading of Louise PennyтАЩs The Beautiful Mystery.
