The bank employee Joseph K. is arrested one morning without knowing why he is being accused. He begins a futile struggle to prove his innocence while simultaneously trying to uncover what lies behind this enigmatic charge.

However, he encounters insurmountable difficulties everywhere and fails to reach any logical conclusion. The judges remain unseen, the court officials provide vague explanations, and whatever takes place in the courtroom is incomprehensible. Every attempt to prove his innocence falls flat.

Gradually, the noose of guilt weighing on him becomes suffocating, and he gets lost in the maze of a world where the prolonged ambiguity of absurdity overtakes him. Written in 1914, The Trial is one of the most important novels of the twentieth century.

Joseph K.'s story can be read as a quest for the meaning of human existence, a parable that expresses the anxiety and alienation of the modern man, or a prophecy of the absurdities of modern bureaucracy and the madness of totalitarian regimes.