Der Proceß
1825
- fiction
- alegorical fiction
- manuscripts
- facsimiles
- trials
- ficción
- procesos criminales
- fiction, psychological
- continental european fiction (fictional works by one author)
- psychological fiction
The story
Byzantine and claustrophobic novel of a man arrested by the secret police and charged with an unspecified crime. Unable to defend himself and disorientated by the legal process at work around him the man soon becomes apathetic and acquiescent, accepting his eventual sentence as inevitable.
What it’s like
Dim, stuffy interiors dominate: low-ceilinged boarding rooms, corridors of identical doors, dusty attic offices and endless stairwells, all lit by weak lamplight and grey daylight that never quite warms. The prose is plain, exact and politely bureaucratic, so the strangeness creeps in through calm, reasonable sentences that refuse to explain themselves, like a dream recounted by someone too tired to be alarmed. The pace is slow and recursive, circling the same rooms and conversations with mounting fatigue rather than escalating action. Its mood is airless, dry unease with a sour undertow of absurd humour, well suited to a rainy weekday evening, a sleepless night alone, or a slow reread. Violence is sparse and mostly off-page, with one stark, bleak closing scene; dread and humiliation do the work instead of gore, and a few brief, non-explicit erotic moments appear. The emotional register is cold and resigned, following a man's gradual surrender to forces he cannot see or name. It is for readers who enjoy existential puzzles, bureaucratic absurdity and the suffocating atmosphere of early twentieth-century Central Europe.
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