The Trial cover art

The Trial

Penguin Classics

 Preview
Try Standard free
Select 1 audiobook a month from our entire collection.
Listen to your selected audiobooks as long as you're a member.
Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

The Trial

By: Franz Kafka, Idris Parry - translator, Idris Parry - introduction
Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Try Standard free

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $26.99

Buy Now for $26.99

About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, winner of the 2019 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral.

 Absurdist Classics Dystopian Genre Fiction Political Psychological Science Fiction Thriller & Suspense Fiction Exciting

Critic Reviews

The Dante of the Twentieth Century (W. H. Auden)
This compelling, prophetic novel anticipates the insanity of modern bureaucracy and the coming of totalitarianism (The Daily Telegraph)
It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of that work that it offers everything and confirms nothing (Albert Camus)
It was Kafka who made me understand that one can write differently (Gabriel García Márquez)
All stars
Most relevant
the narrator did a awesome job in this audiobook but the story is great and interesting

amazing audiobook

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
An incredibly disturbing tale. Your life is stitched up and you’ll never understand why. The powers that be are authoritative and absolute and function only for their own protocols and processes. Haunting and dim but sublime.

Proto-P.K. Dick

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.