The New Trial

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by Peter Weiss,

Translated by James Rolleston, Kai Evers . Introduction by James Rolleston and Kai Evers

Duke University Press

Due/Published April 2001, 152 pages, paper

ISBN 0822326906

Peter Weiss's final drama, completed only months before his death in 1982 and never before published in English. Weiss is best known to American audiences as the author of Marat/Sade and the three-volume novel The Aesthetics of Resistance.

A transformative "updating" of Kafka's novel The Trial, The New Trial presents a surreal, hallucinatory look at the life of "Josef K.," chief attorney in an enormous multinational firm that exploits both his idealism and his self-doubt in order to present to the world a public face that will mask its own dark and fascistic intentions. Fusing Marxist and capitalist perspectives in a manner that anticipates aspects of the current global market expansion, Weiss evokes a world in which nothing is private and everything is for sale.

An extensive introduction by James Rolleston and Kai Evers situates the work in the full context of Weiss's life, including his Swedish exile during the regime of the Third Reich. In addition, the play's text is followed by interviews with Weiss and his original codirector (and wife) Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, as well as an account of the challenges of the first English staging by director Jody McAuliffe.