The Trial - Franz Kafka

I first read "The Trial" last winter. I couldn't think of a better time to read it. I had bought the book from a local bookshop and put it on my shelf for the near future. There it sat covered in a thin layer of dust. I picked it up one cold night and entered the world of Mr. Franz Kafka. I can honestly say that I have never read anything like this. I too am a writer and Franz Kafka has had a huge influence on my own writing ever since. Franz Kafka Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague. He received a degree in Law and then went on to work for an insurance firm. It is very interesting because he did not live ...  Read the complete review

A man is accused of a crime, but not told the nature of the crime he has comitted. He must appear in court and defend himself. He struggles to find out what he has done, to get aid, to protect his name, but learns that each step he takes to preserve himself is only increasing his difficulty. The world around him closes in, friends of old seem like potential betrayers and nothing makes sense any more. His one fleeting grasp at love is hopless, and there seems to be no way out of the closing trap. Kafka himself lived in Easturn Europe during a time when insane systems and incomprehensible rules made anyone a potnetial criminal. The Trial is a portrayal of this ...  Read the complete review

Don't read this book if you want to end up with a feelgood happy ending and a rosy glow inside. It is a chilling, unnerving, unsettling novel that will make you want to glance over one shoulder as you go down quiet streets, and for the week after you have read it you will wonder whether that guy on the Tube was following you or not. You'll catch yourself wondering what was behind that door, or round that corner that you didn't quite reach. K is a man with a problem - except he doesn't know what it is. Nor does anybody else. The only thing he does find out is that he is going to be brought to trial for it, although this is unlike any judicial ...  Read the complete review

"Somebody must have made a false accusation against Josef K., for he was arrested one morning without having done anything wrong" And so we enter the dark underbelly of Kafka's mind. The novel follows the realizations and imaginations of Josef K. as he comes to terms with what has happened. The trial is definitely an abstract piece of literature and although the plot seems simple enough, the language and metaphors that Kafka sometimes implements as too brilliant for the average man's comprehension. The novel is filled with suspense and desperation as you would expect from any court orientated novel; however Kafka ...  Read the complete review

Kafka's story of faceless bureaucracy and an inevitable fate, like other of his books, has influenced our ideas of society. The character, known only as K, gradually becomes aware that the immense and unfathomable system of government is accusing his of some unknown offence. At first dismissive and contemptuous, he grows to realise the vast and unstoppable mechanisms that surround him. The ideas of a huge, secret and inscrutable government perhaps came from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, in which Kafka grew up. But his skills are constructing this system, surrounding K at every turn with new evidence of the scheme. Each new facet, each voice added to the ...  Read the complete review