[1] As in the earlier works, he wrote his own libretto, this time based on both the novel and its dramatization by Kafka's friend Max Brod.

[1][2][3] Asked in interview why he turned to the literature of a past time, he said that the topic is timeless: a stranger arrives in a community that rejects him, and an apparatus observes him.

[4] The opera premiered on 2 September 1992 at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, staged by Willy Decker and conducted by Michael Boder.

[1][5][6] A reviewer of the premiere for Die Zeit describes the lines of divided strings as a labyrinth, as a formal reflection of the protagonist's ways in the village that he enters as a stranger with a job mission.

[1] The same lines, with rhythmic variations, is repeated in the end, as a frame for the work, and as an image for an endless sound, transcending K.'s death.