Amerika: A New Translation by Mark Harman Based on the Restored Text

Written by Franz Kafka

Narrated by George Guidall

A Brilliant new translation of the great writer's least Kafkaesque novel, based on a German-language text that was produced by a team of international scholars and that is more faithful to Kafka's original manuscript than anything we have had before.

With the same expert balance of precision and nuance that marked his translation of Kafka's The Castle, the award-winning translator Mark Harman now restores the humor and particularity of language to Amerika. Here is the story of seventeen-year-old Karl Rossman, who, following a scandal involving a housemaid, is banished by his parents to America. With unquenchable optimism and in the company of two comic-sinister companions, he throws himself into misadventure after misadventure, eventually landing in Oklahoma, where a career in the theater beckons.

Like much of Kafka's work, Amerika remained unfinished at the time of his death. Though we can never know how Kafka planned to end the novel, Mark Harman's superb translation allows us to appreciate as closely as possible, what Kafka did commit to the page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ascent Audio
• Release date: Feb 10, 2009
• ISBN: 9781596593626

Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (Praga, 1883 - Kierling, Austria, 1924). Escritor checo en lengua alemana. Nacido en el seno de una familia de comerciantes judíos, se formó en un ambiente cultural alemán y se doctoró en Derecho. Su obra, que nos ha llegado en contra de su voluntad expresa, pues ordenó a su íntimo amigo y consejero literario Max Brod que, a su muerte, quemara todos sus manuscritos, constituye una de las cumbres de la literatura alemana y se cuenta entre las más influyentes e innovadoras del siglo xx. Entre 1913 y 1919 escribió El proceso, La metamorfosis y publicó «El fogonero». Además de las obras mencionadas, en Nórdica hemos publicado Cartas a Felice.

Reviews for Amerika

[tonem_4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There was something about this book that kept me from connecting with it in an emotional way, perhaps if this is a life experience that you can relate to on a personal level this story would quickly entice you, if not there is no real structural criticism to novel that is overtly distracting. Yet I found myself wandering and wondering subconsciously if there were allusions or aphorisms that i was not privilege too. This is still an excellent read, don't over think it.

[gbill_7 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The idea of being unexpectedly arrested for unspecified crimes and hauled away to stand trial is one we’re used to from reading about totalitarian regimes in history, particularly over the past 100 years, and from the arts. “The Trial” was published in 1925, a year after Franz Kafka’s death, and presages that. There is a dark undercurrent knowing Kafka was a Jew in Prague shortly before Hitler would put the entire race on trial; Kafka didn’t live to see the Holocaust but his family did, and many of his relatives perished in concentration camps. This amplified the message and meaning of the book for me.The frustration of battling an unseen legal bureaucracy is a much darker take on “Bleak House” by Charles Dickens; here “K” is battling for his life. As Steiner puts it in the introduction to this edition, “To live is to be sentenced for living.” However, despite all that great existential darkness, as with “The Metamorphosis”, it’s a book I didn’t particularly enjoy or would recommend. It’s a bit like required reading, only less creative than “The Metamorphosis”, published posthumously and unfinished, and painfully longer … so if you want a book of Kafka’s to read, I would recommend it instead of “The Trial.”

[davidgnp · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is more difficult to review than Kafka's 'The Metamorphosis' as it is fragmented and incomplete, though, strangely, Kafka gave it an ending. In fact, everything is strange about the book, which is Kafka's intention - it's clear that he wants the reader to feel as disoriented as the 'hero' Josef K, a successful senior bank official who wakes up one morning to find his lodgings invaded by secretive policeman, come to inform him he is being arraigned for trial for some nameless crime.We never get to a trial as such, only a sort of preliminary hearing. The court and all its officials are housed in a tenement block in a poor part of town, where living quarters and offices of court are merged into one another or linked by mysterious corridors, some of which seem to open up unexpectedly, like a darker version of Lewis Carroll's Wonderland. At K's office, too, bizarre scenes and exchanges take place at the opening of a door. It all contributes to a sense that nothing is quite what it seems, and everything is menace. We can't even be sure of K; all we know about him is by his own reckoning, and although he is, in the early stages of the book, very pleased with himself there are hints of character traits which are very unpleasant, not least his lecherous and vaguely misogynistic attitude to women.The power of the novel comes from K's growing obsession and sense of foreboding about the trial. We see him gradually disintegrate before us. The more he seeks to know the less he knows. The characters around him seem at once to know everything and nothing. The threat is claustrophobic and, like his supposed crime, nameless. The ending that Kafka gives us is ritualised and solemn - perhaps in the way that executions are universally, whether they be labelled 'legitimate' or 'illegitimate'. The symbolism is political, but the shiver is deeply and unforgettably personal.Reviewer David Wiliams writes a regular blog Writer in the North.

[donna828 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Kafka did a brilliant job of portraying the frustration and confusion of being thrust down the "rabbit hole" of the mysterious court system. Or, maybe I should say "up" because the ubiquitous courtrooms were most often found after climbing dark wandering staircases or opening unmarked attic doors. Not knowing what one is accused of and getting hopelessly lost in the labyrinth of this mockery of justice is enough to make anyone give up in utter futility.And that's what I did. Even though it was brilliantly written, the sense of doom was conveyed so well that I could only read the book in small increments and felt myself, as K did, gulping for fresh air when it mercifully ended.

[wilfgehlen · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This review is based on Breon Mitchell's translation, published by Schocken Books, 1998. Having the right translation of a foreign language book always matters and Mitchell lucidly explains how the translation of nuances of Kafka's diction (i.e., word choice and expressive style) can strongly influence the reader's interpretation.Josef K. is arrested for an unspecified crime he may or may not have committed and faces an extra-legal process, not involving the usual court system, with unwritten rules and procedures. K. at first does not take the process seriously, but becomes totally consumed over the course of several months. He attends initial inquiries, his uncle introduces him to a lawyer, his bank client introduces him to a friend of the court and his bank president artfully arranges for him to meet the prison chaplain. K. realizes that the trial is indeed serious business, but that none of these advisers can directly influence the outcome of the process. Even the functionaries of the quasi-court who handle his case do not make the final decision--that is made at a higher level, so high that no one can even say who is involved or how they make the decision. K.'s life unravels as the process unfolds, especially after he fires his lawyer and takes control of the case himself. He is confident of his ability to manage the process, perhaps buoyed by the advice given by the friend of the court that, if he is truly innocent, he needs no help from anyone and acquittal is assured. As the trial takes over his life, his one area of success, his banking career, sinks under the weight of his despair. He feels "the trial is positively closing in on me in secret." A year after his arrest, on the eve of his 31st birthday, he discovers the final verdict.The bare facts of the plot make for a nightmarish scene of a man's lonely fight against an unseen bureaucracy. But the nuances of the story contain a deeper layer that suggests that K. has more control of his destiny than seems apparent. He himself has the largest influence on how the process plays out. It was his choice to pursue acquittal, but a better strategy may have been to pursue protraction, an indefinite deferral of judgment suggested as an option by the friend of the court.It is on Day 1 of the trial, his thirtieth birthday, that two minions arrest K., gently confining him to his bedroom with "Wouldn't you rather stay here?" and, after he ventures into the living room, "You should have stayed in your room!" K. considers leaving the premises to force the issue of his arrest, but instead returns to his room, "without a further word," else "they might indeed grab him, and once subdued he would lose any degree of superiority he might still hold over them."Meanwhile, a third minion, the inspector, has set himself up in Frau Burstner's room, and calls for K. to be brought in. The inspector tangentially brings up the matter of K.'s arrest, gives him friendly advice to "think less about us and what's going to happen to you, and instead think more about yourself." Later he says, "that's not at all to say you should despair. Why should you? You're under arrest, that's all." K. is free to go his job as chief financial officer of his bank, the arrest is "not meant to keep you from carrying on your profession. Nor are you to be hindered in the course of your ordinary life."This is a strange sort of arrest, hardly more than a wake-up call, an injunction to "think more about yourself," arresting his attention so as to encourage an examination of his life in the Socratic sense.On Day 365 of the trial two other minions, "old supporting actors," have come to take K. away. Throughout this engagement, the two guards are tentative in their roles, not well-rehearsed in the script of the process. On their journey, the three perform a delicate dance, the guards locking arms with K. using a straight-arm entwining that makes them a single, comical unit. It is K. who takes the lead in this dance. At one point K. stops and says, "I'm not going any farther." The guards are ineffectual in getting K. to move, and it is only with the sudden appearance of Frau Burstner that K. gives up his resistance. It is K. who then chooses to follow her, who abandons the quest when she turns down a side street, who later rushes the three-in-one unit past a policeman who might have intervened if K. had given a sign of distress.Their journey ends at a quarry outside the city where the guards continue to be tentative in their actions. It takes them some time to find a suitable location and position for K. One guard unsheaths a butcher's knife, but they seem uncertain how to proceed as they pass it back and forth between themselves. "K. knew clearly now that it was his duty to seize the knife as it floated from hand to hand above him and plunge it into himself. But he didn't do so [...]." So one guard held him "while the other thrust the knife into his heart and turned it there twice. With failing sight K. saw how the men drew near his face, leaning cheek-to-cheek to observe the verdict. 'Like a dog!' he said; it seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.""Like a dog." K.'s assessment, not the plunge of the knife, is the verdict. A self-verdict on his (now) examined life, not an indictment of the manner of his death. The knife was his final wake-up call and the guards attend closely to hear the verdict that K. quickly reaches under the ultimate stress of approaching death.His conduct of the trial is like a dog begging at the dinner table: when no morsel appears from a diner--when no tidbit of advantage accrues from the landlady (Frau Grubach), the washerwoman, the merchant (Block), the lawyer--K. abandons them, dismisses them, and moves on to the next diner. K. does not use his human capacity for reasoning, but, like an animal living unaware and only in the moment, "He'd always tended to take things lightly, to believe the worst only when it arrived, making no provision for the future, even when things looked bad." He had no social competence, evidenced by his first encounter with Fraulein Burstner: "K. [...] rushed out, seized her, kissed her on the mouth, then all over her face, like a thirsty animal lapping greedily at a spring it has found at last."K. had rapid success in his career, but none at all in his life. His professional colleagues had sailboat, car, villa, and a social life, while he lived in a boardinghouse, had no friends among his contemporaries, had shut out his relatives, had no prospects of finding a life partner. K.'s lilfe was controlled by fear of exposing any weakness, of losing any perception of advantage he had over others. The washerwoman's husband, the court usher, provides K. with a hint to a solution as they discuss the wife's abduction by the law student, Bertold. "'Someone needs to give the student, who's a coward, a thorough flogging the next time he tries to touch my wife [...]. Only a man like you could do it.' 'Why me?' asked K. in astonishment. 'You are a defendant, after all,' said the court usher. 'Yes,' said K., 'but I should fear his influence all the more [...]. Then he gazed at K. with a look of trust he hadn't shown before, in spite of all his friendliness, and added: 'People are always rebelling.'"The verdict exposes his shame and it is, of course, too late for any recourse. Too late for K. to thrash Bertold or to take any of the other forks in his path which led away from the quarry.

[briandarvell_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This was quite a unique book in the way the author describes the events surrounding the main character. Very surreal in a way and you get the impression that the author is trying to show his impression of things in more ways than the direct occurrence of what he's writing about. It's not an easy read but I found many of the passages very interesting and absorbing.

[brose72 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A story of half-blind justice from all viewpoints.

[abirdman_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Prescient dystopic novel with that special Kafka brand of fatalism. Classic. Dry. Baleful as a yowling cat. It's possible some of my feelings about Kafka are colored by the translators. This is not an easy read.

[nmhale_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The only other piece that I've read by Kafka is "Metamorphosis" which is not one of my favorites, even though I can see its literary merits. I wasn't sure what to expect when reading this book, and probably never would have picked it up if it weren't for the group read in which I was participating. Now I'm grateful for that push, because the book was an intense reading experience, quite different from his famous short story, and a good indicator of Kafka's style. I never really knew what "kafka-esque" meant before now.The story is about a man who is accused of a crime, prosecuted, and sentenced, but in this strange totalitarian society, it's not as simple as it seems. First of all, he never learns what his crime is supposed to be. In fact, when he tries to question the police officers he is branded as being difficult and resistant to arrest. As he proceeds through the various ranks of individuals connected to this judicial system, he is constantly told to do what is right, but chastised when he asks what the right thing to do is, and the only clear answer is that what is right, according to law, is not necessarily morally good. In fact, in the first half of the book I was outraged on his behalf, because so many unjust things occur to him or around him.As the story continues, though, the absurdity of this society K lives in becomes so overwhelming that I stopped being angry. The settings start to take on a surreal slant, and it's hard to believe that this is representing any real location anymore. For instance, the important judicial offices are located in the lowest slums, up endless staircases and down dark hallways, until you stumble upon a crowded and dirty court room that can determine the fate of a man's life. Or the scene where a man tosses a woman over his shoulder and runs off, and K follows in pursuit, trying to fight him and discussing his case, all while this guy is still running with a woman on his back.That scene was too bizarre. Eventually, images of endless hallways and shifting stairways filled my head. It all had a surreal feel of one of those labyrinths where the walkways are constantly shifting, representing the endless bureaucracy of this society that is a bewildering maze. Then there was the behavior of K himself. His attitude towards women was rather horrid. I began to wonder if he hadn't done something wrong, after all, and we the readers were being kept in the dark. Maybe, on the other hand, I was succumbing to the system just as K did: he offered resistance to the injustice at first, and gradually accepted that he had to play by heir rules if he hoped to be saved; I was outraged at everything initially, and then began to question whether K wasn't guilty after all. Regardless of his blame, though, the fact remains that the way the judicial system treated him was unjust and ridiculous. This book is a scything indictment on totalitarian communities, and actually, on every society, actually, where the political system has built enough layers of bureaucracy and pointless policies to be an impasse to the common man. This tale of a man helpless to escape his fate against unknown and faceless enemies is not an uplifting read, but nevertheless a fascinating one.

[ashryan_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Trial is a fascinating novel. One can take it in several different ways---for instance, as a quasi-surrealist satire on the early-20th century German legal system (which is unfortunately in some ways relevant to the early-21st century American reader), or as a proto-absurdist metaphysical parable.It was definitely not what I expected. I imagined it would largely be about, well, an actual trial, but the protagonist Josef K. never actually gets his final hearing, though a judgment is reached in his absence and his sentence carried out. The translator explains that this is because the German word for "trial" encompasses all the legal proceedings leading up to and surrounding what we would think of in English as the trial proper. So the book mainly follows K.'s utterly ineffectual attempts to navigate the legal system, though he never even manages to learn what crime he is accused of.Toward the end, a priest from the court tells K. a story (a parable within a parable, so to speak, though Kafka published it as an independent story) about a man who spends his whole life waiting outside his personal gateway into the Law, but never gains admittance through it. They then engage in a long discussion explicating it, which concludes with K.'s statement that "Lies are made into a universal system." Kafka immediately tells us that this was not his final judgment, because he was too tired to take in all the consequences of the story...but this qualification is perhaps an ironic one, since it is in fact the final statement K. gives about it, and considering K.'s own ultimate fate.Unlike Kafka's other unfinished novels (such as The Castle, which simply ends abruptly), The Trial is a complete story, Kafka just never revised it into a final form for publication. Still, it is for that reason among others probably the most readable of his major unfinished works (or, for that matter, of many of his finished ones).Breon Mitchell's translation of this edition is excellent as far as I can judge without being able to read the original myself, and his discussion of his principles and his version's difference from the previous translation is very illuminating, even of the meaning of the novel itself. And George Guidall is perfectly suited to the narration, so I would definitely recommend this audio edition as a good way to experience this strange, funny, sad, frightening novel.

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

On his 30th birthday, Josef K. finds two strange men in his home who insist that he is under arrest, although they cannot name the charge. By the end of the day, he is released from their custody and is told he can go about his regular day-to-day business, although he is still under arrest. Sometime later, he goes to his preliminary hearing in a meeting room buried away in tenement housing in a poor section of the city. As time goes by, he meets people of various connections to this secret court and even visits the court offices tucked away in attic rooms. K. also retains a lawyer, although this secret court technically frowns upon the accused having a defense. Despite all he learns about the court (which is mostly confusing and absurd assertions about the court’s ridiculous proceedings), K. is never able to learn the cause for his arrest. Eventually he is convicted without the benefit of an actual trial, despite the novel’s title. This posthumously published novel was never entirely finished by Kafka, which perhaps explains why I found some of the middle to be tedious ramblings while the ending rushed up all of a sudden out of the blue. I found the beginning to be humorous (in a dark way) although as I read on, the middle parts seemed to drag at times. Unlike with Gregor in The Metamorphosis, which I loved, I could not dredge up much sympathy for K. because he was such an obnoxious character. Also unlike The Metamorphosis, which I felt I understood, this book just seemed a little too out there. I got some of the symbolism, but a lot of the time I just felt like I was missing something. All in all, I’m glad I finally read this classic, but I wasn’t a huge fan.

[cmbohn · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I hated this book. I know it's all meaningful and symbolic, but I hated the main character so much that I didn't care what happened to him! I kept dragging my feet on finishing this book and had to force myself to finish. Well, I'm done. Glad that's over.

[leonard_seet_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

K was accused of an undisclosed crime, based on a hidden law, by an unreachable court. Trying to uncover his crime, he encountered gatekeepers dedicated to blocking his eyes from not only the crime but also the law. At first, shocked or tickled by such a nightmare, the reader soon realized that his biases, prejudices and presumptions are those of K and that to the court administrators, K was the lunatic whose delusion had clouded his eyes. How could we be guilty of violating a law we don’t know of? How could there be a crime without a law? Perhaps K was guilty of holding onto such biases as logic and causality or merely of existing. Whether he understood the law or accepted the sentence, he couldn’t avoid the punishment just as a boy couldn’t avoid growing up.Locating the crime, the law or the court pales against our discovering the colored glasses with which we see the sea and the sky, the banknote and the meatloaf, Napoleon and Genghis Khan, or for that matter, the man or woman in the mirror. We created natural laws to rein in protons and electrons; we created civil laws to rein in John and Jane; we created ecclesiastical canons to rein in God. Then we organized these absolute truths to rein in our fears, hopes and humanity. So once in a while we should enjoy the shock as from The Trial and realize that we still could create absolute truths when we’re bored texting or twittering.

[tjwilson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's saddening that such a wonderful criticism of bureaucracy has existed for a lesser amount of time than the bureaucracy it laments.

[sean191 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is the third work I've read from Kafka (after The Metamorphosis and The Hunger Artist). I enjoyed the other two more, but I think The Trial had some things stacked against it. First, it was uncompleted, or maybe just the revisions Kafka might have undertaken had been left undone. Second, I feel it was a much more intricate work than the prior two. Parts of this novel seem to hint at religion. Especially the parable about the man and the guard at the door. Can it be that K is in purgatory? It seems like that answer would fit so nicely into the story. I haven't read the reviews of others on this yet, but I'm sure someone else has advanced that idea. If that's the case, you have my total endorsement!In my copy of the book, I have a pro and con. The con is the preface - I have a big problem with prefaces going into plot details of the book. Chances are, the author provides those plot details better than the individual introducing - let the author do his or her job! I don't want a spoiler at the beginning of a book. Discuss plots and so forth at the end of the book to avoid creating a bias or stunting critical thinking. I usually read EVERYTHING in a book - fly leaf, about the author, even the paragraph about the typeset - but I skipped the preface when I started picking up on some spoiler info and I decided not to return to it because I was annoyed.That being said, I did read the notes after the story ended and I read sections that had been deleted by Kafka or portions that had been taken out following his death because a chapter was unfinished. This was great to read - for the deleted materials, I saw a glimpse of an even better novel had he time to polish the final work. For the additional information about Kafka from his friend, it's always interesting to me to read about how close to oblivion particular great works were at one time or other. Kafka's works apparently were close - or in some cases, they were destroyed. That puts them up there with the near demise of Bram Stoker's Dracula and (ok maybe this is a stretch, but it's near and dear to my heart) Wilson Rawl's Where the Red Fern Grows.

[heidilove_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

ugh. but good anyway.

[kambrogi_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

If you are reading this book for a seminar class or for the pleasure of parsing a book length allegory, you will find plenty to amuse you in this classic 1925 German work. If, on the other hand, you are looking to lose yourself in a compelling fiction and hope to meet a realistic protagonist with whom you can identify, never mind.

[sanctispiritus · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Behind Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, this is perhaps the greatest book in which the author immerses his reader into the protagonist's soul. The damnable truth of the matter is there is little absurd in Kafka's "absurd" prose. This book grips you in the protagonist's fear, despair, despondency, boldness, and indecisiveness. He can trust no one, and everyone turns out to be his enemy. Just imagine how great the story would be if the author lived to complete it. Alas, maybe it would not be as good at all. Anyway, enjoy this classic tale, and learn how little stands between Kafka's written word, and current day.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I started reading this aaaages ago, and finally finished it by skimming through. I don't know what it is -- maybe the translation, maybe just Kafka's style -- but I found it more infuriating and frustrating than anything. I enjoyed the dark humour, but I don't think this style of completely absurd situation is for me, and I couldn't judge on the quality of Kafka's writing from this translation. Maybe if, someday, I learn German...

It probably doesn't help that I'm in bed recovering from food poisoning, so perhaps you should take my opinion with a pinch of salt. Still, however important it is in a literary sense, I can't say I enjoyed it.

[raggedprince · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I was forced to read this book because I was in a long queue, which kind of fits in with its content! It's since become one of my favourites and I must recommend the new translation by the American chappie. The chapter later on with the lawyer in bed is one of the high points of literature. Thank goodness for long queues!

[davidmilnes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

He didn't live to finish and edit this, but nonetheless you can see just from The Trial that Kafka's was the seminal imagination of the last century, not Beckett or Joyce. In fact Beckett is very indebted to him.

[womblingstar · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This a quite a strange book but very good. It is about a man who is arrested and on trial but is never told what his crime was. He tries to get people to defend him without success, and tries on his own but it is no help. He seems to go a bit mad in the process. The trial itself is very strange, not held in proper court rooms, no one knows who the officials are. A really interesting psychological story.

[kidornery · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book hits me in places no other book touches. Reading it generally means locking myself up in my house alone for a few days. It is terrifying and effective and funny and paralyzing.

[jimmychanga · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It's funny because it's true

[ibkennedy · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Sorry, I didn't get it. One of the greatest writers of the early 20th century....beats me!!!

[the_awesome_opossum · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Trial begins with the arrest of Joseph K., an unremarkable citizen who seemingly hasn't done anything to deserve it. He attempts to navigate a legal system that follows no rules or logic whatsoever, and finds himself foiled as there as nobody with sufficient authority to overturn or even influence his case.Kafka is the master of surrealism, which can be fascinating and frustrating by turns to read. But the incoherence of the plot makes its own point, a distinct criticism on the inscrutable nature and dynamics of persecution. Fascinating book, I'm really glad I finally picked it up.

[poplin_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I began reading The Trial mostly because it is the sort of book that you feel you should read, and that impression was mostly unchanged upon finishing it.The plot of The Trial is probably well-known even to those who have never read it. On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K. is arrested. The charges are never revealed to him, and Josef K. must attempt to defend himself against unknown charges in the face of an obscured and foreboding legal system.Ultimately, The Trial is a book about which I have little to say. It was certainly a worthwhile read if only to gain a greater understanding of what it means to be “Kafkaesque.” Perhaps my biggest complaint is that Kafka’s purpose seemed to be to make a point rather than to make a point through telling a story. Of course, the fact that The Trial remained unfinished on Kafka’s death more than likely contributes to this feeling.In short: when I read the last page of The Trial, I was glad to have read it, but I was even more glad to have finished it. And that probably says everything that needs to be said.

[axya_4 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Good book, very well-written. The style of composition sterile, the story twisting and elaborating, the air suffocating, which serves the point well. Kafka is still beyond my grasp though =.= he makes me fall asleep.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Trial (tr. David Whiting). It's probably unwise to compete with the mountain of critical commentary known as "fortress Kafka" but I will give a first impression: dream-like, disjointed, modernist, hardly a plot. The writing is precise and realistic, like a court record - but events unfold in a terrifying nightmare that never ends. Throughout I was reminded of experiences at Wikipedia - anonymous people, unknown motives, unknowable systems, no escape, inability to control events and procedures and so on. I think the reason this story is so influential is because it is a mirror - the more one looks into it the more it looks back at you, offering endless possibility for interpretation. What an awful view on modernity. Mostly I found it an uncomfortable book (by design). I might try the Orson Welles adaptation as another approach, Welles thought it his best film. Update: The Orson Welles film is excellent, the sets are amazing, but like the book it is uncomfortable.

[araridan · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As the Trial is somewhat of a classic, I really don't have much to add. Overall I really liked the book and its sense of paranoia and futility in the face of bureaucracy. If you are familiar at all with Kafka, you'll neither be surprised nor disappointed.