Alice Poon's Blog - Posts Tagged "franz-kafka"

The Trial by Franz Kafka

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



This novel is a bleak parody of the legal system, or bureaucracy in general, or even life itself, depending on the reader's interpretation. The shadow of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment does hover above this novel with its philosophical metaphors.

It is said that the description of the protagonist's bizarre experiences with the law was inspired by an actual legal case in which Kafka was involved in. I don't doubt that absurdities of the strangest kind did and still do exist even in democratic countries, let alone authoritarian regimes.

On the whole, I didn't enjoy this novel quite as much as I did The Metamorphosis. The writing seems to drone on and on. None of the characters moves me. Hence 3 stars.





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