Kafka S Indictment Of Modern Law

The legal system is often denounced as "Kafkaesque"—but what does this really mean? This is the question Douglas E. Litowitz tackles in his critical reading of Franz Kafka's writings about the law. Going far beyond Kafka's most familiar works—such as The Trial—Litowitz assembles a broad array of works that he refers to as "Kafka's legal fiction"—consisting of published and unpublished works that deal squarely with the law, as well as those that touch upon it indirectly, as in political, administrative, and quasi-judicial procedures. Cataloguing, explaining, and critiquing this body of work, Litowitz brings to bear all those aspects of Kafka's life that were connected to law—his legal education, his career as a lawyer, his drawings, and his personal interactions with the legal system. A close study of Kafka's legal writings reveals that Kafka held a consistent position about modern legal systems, characterized by a crippling nihilism. Modern legal systems, in Kafka's view, consistently fail to make good on their stated pretensions—in fact often accomplish the opposite of what they promise. This indictment, as Litowitz demonstrates, is not confined to the legal system of Kafka's day, but applies just as surely to our own. A short, clear, comprehensive introduction to Kafka's legal writings and thought, Kafka's Indictment of Modern Law is not uncritical. Even as he clarifies Kafka's experience of and ideas about the law, Litowitz offers an informed perspective on the limitations of these views. His book affords rare insight into a key aspect of Kafka's work, and into the connection between the writing, the writer, and the legal world.

On his 30th birthday, Josef is arrested K. He is not told of the nature of his crime or the authority on which he is arrested. K. is not detained but when he tries to appear in court, even more strange things begin to happen. The Trial is one of Franz Kafka's most well-known and wonderfully strange works. This Xist Classics edition has been professionally formatted for e-readers with a linked table of contents. This ebook also contains a bonus book club leadership guide and discussion questions. We hope you’ll share this book with your friends, neighbors and colleagues and can’t wait to hear what you have to say about it.

The Trial (German: Der Process) is a novel by Franz Kafka about a character named Josef K., who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime. According to Kafka's friend Max Brod, the author never finished the novel and wrote in his will that it was to be destroyed. After his death, Brod went against Kafka's wishes and edited The Trial into what he felt was a coherent novel and had it published in 1925. Franz Kafka was one of the major German-language fiction writers of the 20th century. A middle-class Jew based in Prague, his unique body of writing - many incomplete and most published posthumously - has become amongst the most influential in Western literature. Kafka's works - including the stories Das Urteil (1913, "The Judgement"), In der Strafkolonie (1920, "In the Penal Colony"); the novella Die Verwandlung ("The Metamorphosis"); and unfinished novels Der Prozess ("The Trial") and Das Schlo ("The Castle") - have come to embody the blend of absurd, surreal and mundane which gave rise to the adjective "kafkaesque." Source: Wikipedia

A brilliant translation of one of the most important novels of the twentieth century, revealing a tale that is as full of energy and power as it was when it was first written. From the author of The Metamorphosis. Written in 1914, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly and inexplicably arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Whether read as an existential tale, a parable, or a prophecy of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the madness of totalitarianism, Kafka's nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers. This new edition is based upon the work of an international team of experts who have restored the text, the sequence of chapters, and their division to create a version that is as close as possible to the way the author left it.

Narrates the experiences and reactions of a respectable bank functionary after his abrupt arrest on an undisclosed charge

The story of the mysterious indictment, trial, and reckoning forced upon Joseph K. in Franz Kafka’s The Trial is one of the twentieth century’s master parables, reflecting the central spiritual crises of modern life. Kafka’s method–one that has influenced, in some way, almost every writer of substance who followed him–was to render the absurd and the terrifying convincing by a scrupulous, hyperreal matter-of-factness of tone and treatment. He thereby imparted to his work a level of seriousness normally associated with civilization’s most cherished poems and religious texts. Translated by Willa and Edwin Muir

The Trial (German: Der Process) is a novel Franz Kafka about a character named Josef K., who awakens one morning and, for reasons never revealed, is arrested and prosecuted for an unspecified crime. According...