book data
6210 ratings, 4.05 average rating, 402 reviews
(more data...)
edit
published
1987
(first published 1925)
by Schocken
binding
Paperback
isbn
0805204164
(isbn13: 9780805204162)
description
A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not com...more
Sign in to Goodreads to see your friends' reviews of this book.
| topics | replies | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| True North: October Book Shelf -- Weirdos List Thread | 52 | 93 | 10/27/2008 01:08PM | |
| I Love Lists: Jimmy's List | 3 | 39 | 10/12/2008 02:58PM | |
| Who's read The Trial? | 2 | 32 | 05/17/2008 05:22PM |
friend reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.
This book is currently not featured on any Listopia lists.
Add this book to your favorite list »
other reviews (showing 1-20 of 8031)
All ratings
|
5 stars (2195)
|
4 stars (2200)
|
3 stars (1084)
|
2 stars (278)
|
1 star (88)
|
avg 4.05
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
anyone interested in bizarre situations of dizzying anxiety
This may be the strangest book I have ever read. What can I say - it was Kafkaesque! I never knew what the trial was about, but I always thought it was about, well, a trial. It turns out - and I'm not spoiling it for you, because this is clear in the beginning - that Josef K. doesn't know what the trial is about either.
Sometimes it's hard in German for me to be sure I have the tone right, but much of this book is dream/nightmare-like, not unlike Die Verwandlung. I can't say that I got much ou...more
Sometimes it's hard in German for me to be sure I have the tone right, but much of this book is dream/nightmare-like, not unlike Die Verwandlung. I can't say that I got much ou...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Has a copy to sell/swap
—
Read in February, 1999
recommends it for:
Citizens Everywhere
Tell Congress:
(1) Immediate repeal of the "Protect America Act of 2007" enacted in August.
(2) Immediate impeachment of Alberto Gonzales for lying to Congress when he testified under oath that there was no "serious disagreement" inside the Justice Department over the illegal program, even though then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and his top aides dramatically threatened to resign over the program.
(3) Immediate impeachment of George Bush for violating FISA over 40...more
(1) Immediate repeal of the "Protect America Act of 2007" enacted in August.
(2) Immediate impeachment of Alberto Gonzales for lying to Congress when he testified under oath that there was no "serious disagreement" inside the Justice Department over the illegal program, even though then-Attorney General John Ashcroft and his top aides dramatically threatened to resign over the program.
(3) Immediate impeachment of George Bush for violating FISA over 40...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in April, 2007
The form of this novel is startling: Kafka begins with neither a setting (a possible world in which actions can proceed in a logical and realistic manner) nor a character (a subject of actions which proceed from something like "personality" or "character"), but with what I will call, for lack of a better term, a "circumstance." Joseph K., about whom we know nothing, is arrested. Events and space itself develop and diverge from this circumstance, but in a way that ...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in January, 1985
When I was in high school - 11th grade, I think, we were assigned a big English project: choose any author, read everything you can find by said author, report back. In an effort to distinguish myself from the masses, I chose an author whom I figured was obscure and utterly unknown to my highschool compatriots: Franz Kafka. I loved this book and also The Castle. Loaded with religious motifs. God is completely inaccessible and all that jazz. That was during my extended Hopelessness and Despair Ye...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in January, 2007
"The Trial" is funny. If you read it as a comedy, it's not only more entertaining, it's far more frightening. Dark Comedy. The moral of the story, to elaborate a cliche', is that it's only futile to resist when you have no idea what you're resisting. We never know what K did wrong, and neither did he, and the whole thing is just an absurd mystery that literally trips itself up sentence by sentence. There are banana peels strewn all over this book and the slapstick is existential rather...more
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in August, 2007
My first experience with Kafka. After vacationing in Praque, I came home and wanted to read this book that had been sitting on my shelves for quite some time.
And I'm happy I did - the way the system completely undermines individual spirit and even one's faith in one's own innocence is very interesting.
A book that's defnitely worth reading.
And I'm happy I did - the way the system completely undermines individual spirit and even one's faith in one's own innocence is very interesting.
A book that's defnitely worth reading.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
I got slightly bored, set it aside in favor of both lighter and heavier reading - still intend to finish it, but am not feeling involved yet. Also the main character reminds me of someone out of Seinfeld, I can't decide if it's George or Jerry, but either way that is not a favorable impression.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
1 comment
Reading Kafka is distressingly similar to living in our current society. No bullshit.
Like this review?
yes
(1 person liked it)
add a comment
Read in November, 2008
recommends it for:
those attempting to peer through
I borrowed this book from the library, but after reading it I will definitely purchase it and read it again. I have read The Castle, but I feel I need to read that again as well. It's a compelling coincidence that I while I was reading the Trial; I was also reading many articles regarding Guantanamo (http://www.nybooks.com/article....
The Trial begins with Joseph K. (the main character) arrested in his home by some unknown ...more
The Trial begins with Joseph K. (the main character) arrested in his home by some unknown ...more
Like this review?
yes
4 comments
Read in October, 2008
"the trial" is one of those books that makes you feel really uncomfortable the whole time you're reading it. the main character is arrested and put on trial by a shady court of dubious legitimacy, and the whole time, he has no idea what's going on or even what he's charged with. perhaps most disconcertingly, he doesn't even seem that bothered by all of this. the book is full of really freaky and terrifying dreamlike scenes where strange things happen and nothing's ever explained. chara...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in October, 2008
"The Trial" by Franz Kafka is a very intriguing book, and it continues to bend my mind the day after I read its last page.
Josef K, a bank clerk, wakes one morning to find strange men at the door who inform him of his arrest. They don't provide a reason for the arrest, and a few hours later, leave him to continue with his life. Accepting his "arrest" without ever knowing the charges, Josef spends the rest of the novel trying to advance his "case" through a secr...more
Josef K, a bank clerk, wakes one morning to find strange men at the door who inform him of his arrest. They don't provide a reason for the arrest, and a few hours later, leave him to continue with his life. Accepting his "arrest" without ever knowing the charges, Josef spends the rest of the novel trying to advance his "case" through a secr...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2006
Everyone is probably familiar with the concept of The Trial: A man ("K."), much to his surprise, is "arrested" one morning before breakfast and informed that he will be tried for certain unstated crimes in a secret court with secret laws. He is allowed no official legal representation, and (as far as anyone can say) everyone who is tried is found guilty. Naturally, this mysterious trial becomes his obsession and his work and social life suffer. K. seems to unwittingly make hi...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in June, 2008
recommends it for:
intellectuals
This is an interesting book that could/should have been a novella. A young man awakes one morning to find he has become a "monstrous vermin" - sorry, that was Kafka's other book. This fellow awakes to find several men there to advise him he is under investigation. No one knows what the issue is, or can tell him. The story is the classic metaphor for the nameless state and mans struggle to survive as an individual once the state has got one by the scruff. The middle part of the book ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Absolutely brilliant, I can say without any hesitation that Kafka's "The Trial" will be one of my favorite books of all time from now on, next to "Anna Karenina," "The Portrait of A Lady," and "Onegin." The novel started as a farcical comedy but ended as a devastating tragedy. The tragic ending seems unavoidable although the cause of it remains a mystery well beyond the final page. The vision of the world which Kafka created here, with wit and irony, is ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
This book is, at times, delightfully detailed and tedious, stimulating a perverse desire for inane details in the reader.
Underlying its depiction of mundane, narcissistic details of the life of K, the main character, is the ongoing spectre of his trial. Strangely, though he is on trial, he is not imprisoned and his arrest is simply a house arrest that is over in a matter of hours. He finds the mechanisms of the legal system that has accused him scattered in bureacratic havens above and beh...more
Underlying its depiction of mundane, narcissistic details of the life of K, the main character, is the ongoing spectre of his trial. Strangely, though he is on trial, he is not imprisoned and his arrest is simply a house arrest that is over in a matter of hours. He finds the mechanisms of the legal system that has accused him scattered in bureacratic havens above and beh...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in April, 2008
Wow. One odd, haunting book. Fascinating concepts, brilliant details. A hard read for those who like a good narrative structure -- the book is dreamlike and many passageways in this story lead to dead ends, but my goodness, what gargoyles you see on your way!
"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning." That's the first line. Joseph knows he is on trial, but does not know for what: he continues his r...more
"Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one fine morning." That's the first line. Joseph knows he is on trial, but does not know for what: he continues his r...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
All
Reading Kafka is what I imagine it would be like to listen while someone narrated their own dream if one had such coherent dreams. The environments within Kafka's stories are always eerie and established just to the point of being dream-like, but the situations in "The Trial" are a lot more physically aware than the ones in his other unfinished novel "The Castle." For example there is a scene where he is in the lobby attic of the court house and he is being suffocated by th...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in December, 2007
This is either a very simple book or a very complicated book, depending on what you want to make of it. In the end, I liked it but I struggled with parts of it to keep my interest and found the style and pace not to my liking. However, I can see how a story such as this could keep a college literature class going for a couple of weeks in deep discussion. There are many ways in which to interpret it -- (1) a philosophical attack on the law and the justice system (including all the players in t...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in January, 2008
recommends it for:
Anyone with the time and who doesn't mind reading senselessness
This book was really good. I started to skip over the introduction, like usual, but a few phrases caught my attention and made me go back and actually read it. Kafka died before the Nazis ever came to power in Germany, but The Trial was forbidden to be published. Part of the reason for this was that Kafka was a Jew. The Nazis did allow a couple of Jewish publishers to continue printing works by Jews, so that the Jewish community may have something to read (how nice!), but they eventually ban...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
Read in October, 2007
Franz Kafka is one of those daunting figures in the world of 20th century letters, and one I've been a bit frightened to approach. However, stranded in a formerly Russian city in the north of China (Harbin) with little to no books in English available, I jumped at the chance to read this translation of The Castle when I found it in a giant bookstore.
What I found was a pleasantly tedious surprise in the story of a land surveyor, K., who arrives in a strange town where everything has a ...more
What I found was a pleasantly tedious surprise in the story of a land surveyor, K., who arrives in a strange town where everything has a ...more
Like this review?
yes
add a comment
to-read
(on 954 people's shelves)
fiction (on 199 people's shelves)
currently-reading (on 198 people's shelves)
classics (on 93 people's shelves)
literature (on 49 people's shelves)
own (on 32 people's shelves)
novels (on 24 people's shelves)
favorites (on 24 people's shelves)
classic (on 18 people's shelves)
1001 (on 15 people's shelves)
More shelves...
fiction (on 199 people's shelves)
currently-reading (on 198 people's shelves)
classics (on 93 people's shelves)
literature (on 49 people's shelves)
own (on 32 people's shelves)
novels (on 24 people's shelves)
favorites (on 24 people's shelves)
classic (on 18 people's shelves)
1001 (on 15 people's shelves)
More shelves...
groups with this book
