The Trial by Franz Kafka Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Trial
Book Review: A ground breaker
Summary: 5 Stars
To think Kafka actually wanted this work, along with his other then unpublished works, to be burnt! A brilliant book that drives you nuts, not only because the reader never finds out the charges against the protagonist Josef K, but also because you cannot escape the feeling that there's nobody to trust. In every step of the way, K finds that he is being lied to or he is being led on by the actions of others, carefully orchestrated to make him compromise his own case, & thus, his life. The setting doesn't help matters either: very surreal is the only way to put the world in which Josef K lives.
Yet, this surreal world is what reflects very accurately what goes on in this world. Who do you trust? When can you trust someone, if at all, if ever? Who's judging you? Why?
Brilliant, is the only way to put it.
Book Review: A masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
I read 'The Trial' by Franz Kafka 10 years after reading 'The Castle', which I didn't like at that time. Maybe I'm older (and a little wiser as well .. :) but this is a masterpiece, especially if you're fed up with life and the way society works in general. Throughout the novel I was amazed by how well structured AND readable it was, despite the absurdity and the surreal situations. I plan to reread 'The Castle' soon!Book Review: A most disturbing and significant book
Summary: 5 Stars
When I was a child, I used to have a reaccuring nightmare; that my head was so heavy I couldn't hold it up, that my neck would be straining and my eyes were cemented shut and my mouth felt full of cotton. Helpless; all my senses were closed off to me in this nightmare. THE TRIAL is like this, only it is the more adult, sophisticated senses that Joseph K. is forced to abandon. His sense of reason, justice, community, responsiblity, sexuality and family duty are all indefinably and unceremoniously yanked from him by an errie, invisable, unnamed but powerful system of judgement. Claustrophobic feelings of growing helplessness and desperation emminate so strongly from Kafka's prose that you could cut it with a knife. I seem to get headaches and a sore neck everytime I read this story. Definately worth it, though. Kafka is brilliant. Average, even mediocre Joe's who always try to do the right thing have their deepest psychological nightmares projected into reality, and are destroyed by them. Everyone can relate to that on some level or another.Book Review: A nightmarish, emaciated vision of industrial society.
Summary: 3 Stars
This is unquestionably a powerful, enigmatical modern, and even postmodern text, with its sordid portrayal of an urbanized universe. It is also a classic essay on the folly of existence. - "Like a dog!" - For what crime is K. on trial? How can he redeem himself? And who is the face at the window, glimpsed towards the end...? - There are no answers, no causes; life is a glaring, unfathomable absurdity. All are constrained by the necessity of obeying the inscrutable "law" that controls all and has everything in its thrall. Kafka's writing is superb, with acute powers of suggestion. His work, which has been very much overrated,in my view, is a brilliant but unpardonably clever description of the pressures and anxieties of modern industrial life.Book Review: A nightmarish, emaciated vision of modern society
Summary: 5 Stars
This is unquestionably a powerful, enigmatical modern, and even postmodern text, with its sordid portrayal of an urbanized universe. It is also a classic essay on the folly of existence. - "Like a dog!" - For what crime is K. on trial? How can he redeem himself? And who is the face at the window, glimpsed towards the end...? - There are no facts, no causes, no continuity; life is a glaring, unfathomable absurdity. All are constrained by the necessity of obeying the inscrutable "law" that controls all and has everything in its thrall. Kafka's writing is superb, with acute powers of suggestion. His preoccupations are with the law, guilt, redemption and the absolute. His work, which has been very much overrated, in my view, is a brilliant but unpardonably clever description of the pressures and anxieties of modern industrial life.