Josef K, 30, lives in a large town in an unspecified country. He is summonsed to answer a charge and appears in the court room for his trial. Franz Kafka evokes all the reality of trial without any of the specifics in a society that seems to have degraded into chaos: squalid environment, rats, yellow liquid shooting out of a hole in the wall. Guards, claustrophobia, anxiety—this is a gripping story and an allegory of modern life. This text remains just as relevant a century after it was written. Rupert Degas reads a new translation by David Whiting.