In the following essay, Kronenberger reexamines The Trial almost fifty years after its initial publication.

When the late Franz Kafka's The Castle was published in this country some years ago, it created no general stir, but it was immediately seized upon by a few people as a very distinguished book. Time has passed, and other people—though still not many—have concurred in that conclusion. I must confess that I have not read The Castle, but I mean to, for I have read The Trial, and not in a long time have I come upon a novel which, without being in any vulgar sense spectacular, is more astonishing.

The Trial is not for everybody, and its peculiar air of excitement will seem flat enough to those who habitually feed on "exciting" books. It belongs not with the many novels that horrify, but with the many...