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The Trial
- Narrated by: Scott Brick
- Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins
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The Trial
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Summary
One of the great works of the 20th century, Kafka's The Trial has been read as a study of political power, a pessimistic religious parable, or a crime novel where the accused man is himself the problem. In it, a man wakes up one morning to find himself under arrest for an offence which is never explained. Faced with this ambiguous but threatening situation, Josef K. gradually succumbs to its psychological pressure.
One of the iconic figures of modern world literature, Kafka writes about universal problems of guilt, responsibility, and freedom. He offers no solutions, but provokes his readers to arrive at meanings of their own. Mike Mitchell's translation captures Kafka's distinctive style. Based on the best available German text, it includes not only the main text but the chapters Kafka left incomplete.
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What listeners say about The Trial
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
- Paul Walter
- 15-03-19
excellent mesmeric
remoursely mesmeric and horrifically hypnotic the full enormity of Kafkas writing is realised in all its cruelty
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Overall1 out of 5 stars
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Performance3 out of 5 stars
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Story1 out of 5 stars
- AHeath
- 09-06-20
At a loss as to why this is considered a classic
I'm not sure why this book has the status that it does. The concept (of someone being embroiled in a trial they don't understand for a crime they can't even be told about) is a good one, with the potential for lots of dark humour and parodying of sclerotic bureaucracies. But the implementation is dry and not very funny and the plotting is all over the place. Characters pop up for a while and say a lot but have no real bearing on story then disappear entirely. Late in the book we are told all about a drinking buddy of the main character, then this narrative is abandoned and appears completely irrelevant to the remainder of the story or anything that went before. There are lots of interesting scenes, each with the potential to be quite eery and sinister but they all ultimately fail to deliver on that promise, and worse - they are all entirely unlinked to each other so each chapter doesn't feel like it builds on the last. I finished this book thinking that Franz Kafka is not some sort of literary genius but simply a rather strange, confused man who has been mistaken for something much more.
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