“It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves.”

A novel of such ambiguity will inevitably lend itself to a diversity of interpretation, but in The Trial you can at least be sure to find every element of storytelling now defined as Kafkaesque.

Josef K., our protagonist, is unexpectedly arrested on the morning of his thirtieth birthday. The agents who arrest him are unidentified, the agency they work for is unspecified, and the crime for which he has been accused is unknown. When he is released, shortly after, he is told to await further instruction. So begins the manic and emotionless trial of a man beholden to the whims of an unknown force, and his painstaking attempts to find a way out of this existential maze.

The Trial brings into focus the absurdity of life, our universal fear of judgement, and one ultimate question: how much of this endless maze will you explore before you accept the fate life has bestowed upon you?

The Legend Classics series:

Around the World in Eighty Days

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

The Importance of Being Earnest

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

The Metamorphosis

The Railway Children

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Frankenstein

Wuthering Heights

Three Men in a Boat

The Time Machine

Little Women

Anne of Green Gables

The Jungle Book

The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories

Dracula

A Study in Scarlet

Leaves of Grass

The Secret Garden

The War of the Worlds

A Christmas Carol

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

Heart of Darkness

The Scarlet Letter

This Side of Paradise

Oliver Twist

The Picture of Dorian Gray

Treasure Island

The Turn of the Screw

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Emma

The Trial

A Selection of Short Stories by Edgar Allan Poe

Grimm Fairy Tales

The Awakening

Mrs Dalloway

Gulliver’s Travels

The Castle of Otranto

Silas Marner

Hard Times