The book

Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeJosef K. is a thirty-year-old senior bank employee and the novel’s central character. He begins confident that status, intelligence, and persistence will defeat an absurd accusation. He wants both to dismiss the case and to master it, and that contradiction keeps drawing him back to the court. His arrogance appears in his treatment of subordinates and women, while his fear grows as the case invades his work and private life. Two executioners kill him in a quarry on the eve of his thirty-first birthday.
If you like The Trial
If you like Franz Kafka
Explore authors with a similar voice, perspective, and influence.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline
The doctor of the Paris slums who wrote the century's blackest, funniest novel — and changed the sound of French prose.
View author
Henry Miller
The Brooklyn dropout who arrived in Paris broke at thirty-eight and wrote the exuberant, banned books that ended American censorship.
View author
Paul Bowles
American novelist and composer whose expatriate fiction explores dislocation, unstable intimacy, fatalism, and North Africa.
View author




