The Trial

The Trial (original German title: Der Process, later Der Prozess, Der Proceß and Der Prozeß) is a novel written by Franz Kafka from 1914 to 1915 and published in 1925. One of his best-known works, it tells the story of a man arrested and prosecuted by a remote, inaccessible authority, with the nature of his crime revealed neither to him nor to the reader. Heavily influenced by Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov, Kafka even went so far as to call Dostoevsky a blood relative. Like Kafka's other novels, The Trial was never completed, although it does include a chapter which brings the story to an end.

After Kafka's death in 1924 his friend and literary executor Max Brod edited the text for publication by Verlag Die Schmiede. The original manuscript is held at the Museum of Modern Literature, Marbach am Neckar, Germany. The first English language translation, by Willa and Edwin Muir, was published in 1937. In 1999, the book was listed in Le Monde's 100 Books of the Century and as No. 2 of the Best German Novels of the Twentieth Century.

The Trial (disambiguation)

The Trial is 1925 novel by Franz Kafka. It may also refer to:

Film

Adaptations of Kafka's novel

Other films

Music

The Trial (2010 film)

The Trial is a 2010 drama film starring Matthew Modine. It is based on the novel of the same name by Robert Whitlow.

Plot

After his two sons and wife die in a horrific car crash, suicide seems to be the only escape for small town attorney Kent "Mac" McClain until he's assigned a capital punishment case involving the murder of the daughter of a powerful business man, in which the victim was drugged. All the odds seem stacked against McClain, and he loses the case. However, McClain manages to save the accused man's life by getting him off death row. At the end of the movie, a private investigator discovers that it was someone else who committed the murder and McClain's client is exonerated.

Cast

Production

Filming took place in Charlotte, North Carolina. Reception has been mostly positive, with Lawrence Toppelman of The Charlotte Observer saying in his review; "The actors are all comfortable in this familiar emotional territory. The low-key Modine seems most at home as the burned-out McClain, but he finally rises to the right level of passionate intensity by the end. Carey is both maternal and romantic, and Gunton – whose 30-year film career seems like an unbroken string of villains, most memorably in The Shawshank Redemption – is more subtle and interesting here than usual."