BannedBooks
Cover of The Trial
1925

The Trial

Franz Kafka

Josef K. is arrested and prosecuted by a mysterious court for a crime that is never specified. Kafka's haunting parable of bureaucratic tyranny was banned in the German Democratic Republic, Soviet satellite states, and Nazi Germany, and was burned by the Nazis after Kafka's death. Though unpublished in Kafka's lifetime, it stands as one of the twentieth century's most important and most suppressed literary works.

politicscensorshipviolenceidentityhistory

Why this book is challenged

  • subversive political themes
  • anti-authoritarian content
  • banned under Nazi and Soviet regimes
  • nihilistic worldview