Joseph K. is arrested one morning, but the nature of his crime is never explained, and the novel follows his increasingly desperate attempts to defend himself against charges he cannot understand. Kafka left the novel unfinished; Max Brod assembled and published it after Kafka's death, against his wishes. The bureaucracy is infinite; the guilt seems to precede any crime; the ending is brutal. The novel anticipates totalitarianism with terrifying precision. K. never learns what he did. Neither do we. The law is whatever the powerful say it is. Kafka showed us the nightmare. We woke up inside it.