The Trial by Franz Kafka.

The Trial was very difficult to read -- I was always looking for an escape. The chief clerk of a bank, a successful functionary in the bureaucracy, is arrested by a court that operates in secret. One of its rules is that the accused can never learn what the charges are. The horror of this book is that the fantastic is recounted as if it were perfectly normal. We are all aware of the counter productive aspects of the bureaucracies in our lives (eVa and our health insurance providers, for two examples!) , in The Trial reason is turned on its head and paranoia is reasonable.