Written in 1914, The Trial is the terrifying tale of Josef K., a respectable bank officer who is suddenly arrested and must defend himself against a charge about which he can get no information. Kafka’s nightmare has resonated with chilling truth for generations of readers.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Kafka's 'legalese' is alchemically fused with a prose of great verve and intense readability."
--James Rolleston, professor of Germanic languages and literatures, Duke University
"Breon Mitchell's translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century."
--Walter Abish, author of How German Is It
--James Rolleston, professor of Germanic languages and literatures, Duke University
"Breon Mitchell's translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century."
--Walter Abish, author of How German Is It
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.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Kafka's The Trial,
This review is from: The Trial (Paperback)
Reading Franz Kafka makes you feel like you are living in a dream - usually a nightmare. The Trial follows Joseph K for a year; the man is accused, apparently without cause, of a crime. He never discovers what crime.
As K struggles to prove his innocence in a secret and subjective court, Kafka reveals K's psychological deterioration. The controlled banker is slowly transformed into a nervous and unstable defendant. The continual presence of the 'case' also brings out K's flaws. Instead of confident, he is exposed as arrogant. Instead of ambitious, he is self-centred. He coldly uses people. He becomes isolated. In the end K surrenders to the situation's senselessness. The Trial confronts humanity's helplessness by investigating the nature of torture. By depicting fear. Kafka leaves us hoping for some higher power; something or someone to make life meaningful.
1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
hauntingly prescient,
By Aquinas "summa" (celestial heights, UK) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Trial (Paperback)
Kafka depicts a terrifying world, a man lost in a world of utter unintelligibility - it is the horror story of the 20th century, where man has sought to negate both his own intelligibility and that of the world. Kafka pre-empts the regimes of Stalin, Hitler and all the other crazies of the 20th Century.
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