Product Description

The terrifying tale of Joseph K, a respectable functionary in a bank, who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. A nightmare vision of the excesses of modern bureaucracy wedded to the mad agendas of twentieth-century totalitarian regimes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #11476 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: German
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Publisher
'It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of that work that it offers everything and confirms nothing' Albert Camus

About the Author
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was born into a Jewish family in Prague. In 1906 he received a doctorate in jurisprudence, and for many years he worked a tedious job as a civil service lawyer investigating claims at the state Worker's Accident Insurance Institute. He never married, and published only a few slim volumes of stories during his lifetime. Meditation, a collection of sketches, appeared in 1912; The Stoker: A Fragment in 1913; The Metamorphosis in 1915; The Judgement in 1916; In the Penal Colony in 1919; and A Country Doctor in 1920. The great novels were not published until after his death from tuberculosis: America, The Trial, and The Castle.

Customer Reviews

Crime & Punishment
The Trial is probably Kafka is his purest form. The one book that finds each of his principal concerns in full tilt, as he layers his story of horrified paranoia and personal confusion alongside elements of personal metaphor, aspects of social and political allegory, and some of the most atmospheric use of writing I’ve ever experienced. The plot is labyrinthine to say the least, with Kafka creating a mood from the outset that will leave the reader as confused and afraid as our protagonist Josef K, before sending him (and, through the writer’s use of a subject narrative, ourselves) down into a free-falling spiral, as conflicting clues and evidence build up against us to further incriminate both the central character (and the reader) in a crime we cannot comprehend.

If this sounds confusing... (well) it is. Kafka keeps large chunks of the plot a secret for as long as he can, making the reader work all the more to decipher the clues that he weaves between the arcane descriptions and densely layered symbolism that is injected into every sentence that we read. Never at any point in time does Kafka allow us to gain more information than K. instead making us work just as hard to find out what is going on in this diabolical world of autocracy and mistrust. Anyone who has seen Orson Welles’ adaptation of the book (or for that matter, Terry Gilliam’s cult classic Brazil) will have a visual template for the kind of world that the writer suggest through his use of words and the imagery they create.

The narrative is purposely multi-layered and features moments of both horror and tension, but also has a strong streak of darkly comic absurdity and the kind of social surrealism that people like Buñuel and Greenaway do so well... whilst the references to detective fiction and the mystery genre is general, are the aspects that made me want to take this out of the library in the first place. Kafka’s work is very demanding, so don’t be surprised if it takes you a couple of attempts to really relax into the mood and intent of the story. However, once you finish this book, you’ll understand why so many people proclaim it a pinnacle of literary genius, and you will certainly be glad that you took the time to experience it.

A truly excellent modern classic
The Trial is the story of one man, Josef K. who one morning discovers that he is being placed under arrest, which is the start of his trial, through madness, paranoia and into the unknown, the reader follows the journey of K. along his spiral downwards as his life begins to fall away.

Throughout the book, we are never told exactly what K. is on trial for, and for a good reason too, Kafka was a brilliant writer. K. wakes one morning and is arrested for an unknown crime, but never actually convicted or placed on trial using the real sense of the word, by that I mean Judge and Jury etc. but ordered to report to a court every so often. This ordeal seems to prove impossible and we soon discover that his trip appears ludicrous, and as the book develops, we start to realise that the trial for K. has turned into a hellish nightmare of dead ends and wild characters.

K.’s frustration and paranoia is something, which, Kafka exploits to outstanding effect, in this humorous, satirical tale of one man struggling against matters, which have already been decided.

Kafka's writing style is extremely effortless, which makes reading this book even more enjoyable, you are not tied down to long descriptive passages, but descriptions of places are perfected enough to envisage the atmosphere and the surroundings. I would recommend this book to anyone who has never read any Kafka before, because although slightly more complex than Metamorphosis, it still remains an excellent book, which allows you to appreciate the author to a great degree. It also persuaded me to go out and read more books by Frank Kafka, a truly excellent modern classic.

Essential
Joseph K awakes one morning to find himself under arrest & inpenitrable labyrinths of beaurocracy prevent him from even finding out the reason why. Kafka predates George Orwells 1984, but already takes it way further. This is an overly guilty, paranoid piece of work - written by an alienated German speaking Czech jew in the early 20th century - but the drowning feeling of helplesness in the face of unseen forces, which control the power in our world, is so relevent to the 21st century. That reality makes this far more unsettling than "horror" writers like Stephen King. Its also interesting how it taps into the conciousness of the time.. perhaps the holocaust could have been predicted. The true horror is when K begins to question whether he really is guilty... I would mention that for practically the same price as this book you can buy all 3 Kafka novels in one volume & they are all superb.