Facts about Franz Kafka's The Trial

1. 05

   In The Trial, Josef K. is executed at the end of the novel, stabbed by two men described as 'like a dog,' without ever learning the charges against him.

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2. 04

   Kafka wrote The Trial in 1914, the same year World War I began, though he never completed or published it during his lifetime.

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3. 03

   The novel remains unfinished, ending mid-chapter, reflecting the fragmented, unresolved nature of Josef K.'s nightmarish legal ordeal.

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4. 02

   Max Brod, Kafka's close friend, defied Kafka's instructions to burn the unfinished manuscript of The Trial after his death.

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5. 01

   Published posthumously in 1925, The Trial follows Josef K., a bank official arrested and prosecuted by an inaccessible, mysterious authority for an unspecified crime.

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