false 56347672 572760 17692 0805209999 9780805209990 57 http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166829696m/17692.jpg http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1166829696s/17692.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17692.The_Trial 4.05 1065 The Trial's publication is almost as fascinating as the novel itself. Kafka intended his parable of alienation in a mysterious bureaucracy to be burned, along with the rest of his diaries and manuscripts, after his death in 1924. Yet his friend Max Brod pressed forward to prepare The Trial and the rest of his papers for publication. When the Nazis came to power, publication of Jewish writers such as Kafka was forbidden; Kafka's writings, many of which have distinctively Jewish themes, did not find a broad audience until after World War II. (Hannah Arendt once observed that although "during his lifetime he could not make a decent living, [Kafka] will now keep generations of intellectuals both gainfully employed and well-fed.") Among the current crop of Kafka heirs is Breon Mitchell, the translator of this edition of The Trial. Rather than tidying up Kafka's unconventional grammar and punctuation (as previous translators have done), Mitchell captures the loose, uneasy, even uncomfortable constructions of Kafka's original story. His translation technique is the only way to convey the comedy and confusion of this narrative, in which Josef K., "without having done anything truly wrong," is arrested, tried, convicted and executed--on a charge that is never disclosed to him. --Michael Joseph Gross]]> 5223 3.86 57580 2925 474837 4.05 1127 63 1925 0 2009-05-30T21:16:56-07:00 823648 140 2009-05-30T21:16:56-07:00 0 2009-05-24T16:18:45-07:00 797143 92 2009-05-24T16:18:45-07:00 0 0 false Sat May 16 23:37:03 -0700 2009 Tue Oct 06 06:20:33 -0700 2009