An explorer visits a penal colony to witness an execution by a machine that inscribes the prisoner's sentence into his flesh over twelve hours. The officer who operates the machine is its last defender; the new Commandant wishes to abolish it. Kafka wrote this in a single night, or so the legend goes. The story is about justice, about tradition, about the body as text, about machines that outlive their makers. The ending, when the officer places himself under the harrow, is one of the most disturbing in literature. Kafka shows us what he sees: a world that writes on our bodies.