A novel of such ambiguity will inevitably lend itself to a diversity of interpretation, but in The Trial you can at least be sure to find every element of storytelling now defined as Kafkaesque.
Franz Kafka left behind explicit instructions in the event of his death: every piece of writing is "to be burned unread." We can only imagine what the landscape of literature would look like today had they followed his request. He is now regarded as one of the most influential writers of the 20th and 21st century, inspiring the likes of W. H. Auden, Vladimir Nabokov, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, Albert Camus, J. M. Coetzee, José Saramago, J. D. Salinger, and Jean-Paul Sartre. It is rumored that Kafka's lover also ignored his request, and secretly kept 20 notebooks and 35 letters. Scholars continue to search for them.
