The Trial: Franz Kafka (Penguin Modern Classics)

What more is there to say about this book that hasn't been said before? The standard way of understanding it is to see it as a kind of prophecy of living under a totalitarian government, but to me it felt much more personal than that, more like a perspective on just living at all. Also, it has one of the best opening lines of any novel ever: "Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K, because he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong." What follows plays out like a dream populated by strange characters, culminating in the scene in the cathedral with the parable of the law. Forget the politics, this is a spiritual journey. Just read it.

I gave this book 4 stars because I recently noticed the I give nearly everything 5 stars so I'm trying to deflate a bit. This is a pretty enjoyable read, though, and as near to technically perfect as anything I've ever read. So don't let a missing star put you off. I can't actually think of anything that would get 5 stars using my new scoring method. Maybe one of Haruki Murakami's books.It is unlikely that you have never heard of this book before. It's Kafka's masterpiece, the origin of the term "Kafkaesque." Its protagonist is trapped in a bizzarre legal process carried out by a remote and unaccountable court for a crime he is never told the nature of. In many ways there are parallels with the old East German Stasi or the secret courts which try terrorism cases in modern Britain. To call this a book about authoritarianism is, though, to miss the point. The book is essentially a black comedy and a satire which touches on aspects of religion, sexual morality and the general pointlessness of life. It's a book about alienation, first and foremost and contains many passages reminiscent of Sylvia Plath's the Bell Jar, Salinger's Catcher in the Rye and Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being, all of which owe a debt to this far superior work of art. My favourite parts are the description of the first hearing, the episode with the artist, the delightful Leni and the unbelievably depressing commentary on the parable of the door keeper. It's ridiculously dark but you find yourself laughing out loud. Brilliant!

This novel has given us a resonant adjective – ‘Kafkaesque’ - to describe a faceless bureaucracy and justice system that are answerable to no-one.I gave this book a try back in 1972 and I still have my original Penguin copy. Back then I see from my bookmark that I gave up at page 128 of 245. With Kafka’s anniversary upon us, I decided to give it another go and purchased this translation by Idris Parry in 2015.Once again, I found it a difficult read to the point of being unreadable. One problem is that the speech is not broken up into a new paragraph with a change of speaker. Thus all the text is a mixture of speech and reportage is presented in a single massive blocks. This makes it difficult to determine who’s speaking and what is being described.Layout issues aside, this book seems like a first draft which it may well be. The book was edited together by Kafka’s friend, Max Brod, after his death in 1924. Understandably, Brod decided not to change any of the text but compiled the novel from various notebooks. There are many overly long passage which are over elaborate and hopelessly long-winded. With a decent editor, this would have worked as a short story or as a novella. This overlong rambling made me resort to skim reading the final third.But at least I’ve completed it. Interestingly it reads more like an urban ‘Alice in Wonderland’ than a parable of a totalitarian state. The arrest of Josef K on charges never specified seem to be relatively minor as the story is a more a satire on the lawyers and officials with whom he has to deal. It may be that Kafka was writing a dreamlike account of his own life as a banker and insurance agent going through an endless meaningless round of bureaucratic procedures.So if Kafka is an empty hole in your reading of literary fiction, then give it a go. But be prepared for a bit of a slog.

Came in amazing condition can’t wait to read!

Item arrived on time and in perfect condition

A grerat if puzzling read

I'm going to look a bit thick, I am a big reader mostly 20th century history, big fan of orwell tried this, struggled to get through it as its quite boring. Sorry.

Great set, daughter read them all