Franz Kafka, Der Prozess [The Trial]

William J. Dodd (University of Birmingham)

Ed. by Gerhard P. Knapp, University of Utah
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.4.2: German-language Writing and Culture: Austria, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, 800-present.
Vol. editors: Gerhard P. Knapp (University of Utah), Jennifer Marston William (Purdue University), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jill E. Twark (East Carolina University)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1914

Places

Czech Republic (Country of Origin)

Genres and Modes

Novel

Resources

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Der Prozess

[

The Trial

], the second of Kafka’s three novels, is arguably the most accessible and most memorable. He began it in August 1914 and abandoned work on it in early 1915. Like all three novels, it remained a fragment, and it would have been lost to posterity had not Max Brod, Kafka’s friend, obtained the manuscript from him, fearing that Kafka would destroy it. Brod edited the assorted papers and published a version of the novel in 1925, a year after Kafka’s death. When Brod fled Prague shortly before the Nazi invasion in 1939, he took the manuscript with him, eventually to Palestine. In 1990 a historical-critical edition appeared which differs in important respects from Brod’s text, correcting misreadings and standardizations of Kafka’s Prague-German, and slightly…

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2031 words

Citation: Dodd, William J.. "Der Prozess". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 April 2005 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11502, accessed 19 April 2024.]

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