"'[I]t seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.' With these words
The Trial ends. Kafka's shame then is no more personal than the life and thought which govern it and which he describes thus: 'He does not live for the sake of his own life, he does not think for the sake of his own thought. He feels as though he were living and thinking under the constraint of a family . . . Because of this unknown family . . . he cannot be released.'"
–Walter Benjamin
"Breon Mitchell's translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century."
–Walter Abish, author of
How German Is It