THE TRIAL is recognized as one of the classics of twentieth-century symbolic literature. The story of Joseph K.—an orderly, industrious chief bank clerk who is suddenly arrested the morning of his thirtieth birthday and must spend the rest of his life defending himself against an unspecified charge—has achieved the status of a modern myth. The novel has as much psychological and philosophic implication as it has dramatic impact.

This Modern Library edition of The Trial contains more than 10,000 words not included in the first American edition. Max Brod, Kafka's literary executor and closest friend, has restored in an Appendix uncompleted chapters and passages deleted by Kafka, making this the definitive edition of his great work.

FRANZ KAFKA, the son of a German-Jewish-Bohemian family, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, in 1883. He received his doctorate in jurisprudence from the German university KarlsFerdinand in Prague in June, 1906, and from 1908 he supported himself by a semi-governmental job with a workers' accident insurance institute—a job with good pay and short hours, which exempted him from military service during the First World War. During his lifetime, he published only a few short stories, beginning with Observations in 1913. He worked on The Trial during the winter of 1916-17, and on The Castle in 1918, but these novels, together with Amerika and his short stories and letters, were not published until after his death. Kafka died of tuberculosis on June 3, 1924, and was buried in PragStraschnitz.