12. Rating and review

[John]

12. Please share your rating and your review here.

[Diane]

Rating: 4 Stars
Read: April 2017

Another unfinished book by Kafka, this tells the story of a banker who is arrested on his 30th birthday and must stand trial. The protagonist and the reader never find out why he is being arrested. He spends the rest of the book futilely trying to fight a vague court system.

It reads like a bad and frustrating dream, culminating in an ending that takes one's breath away. Definitely a book that will stay with me for a long time. I wonder how it would be different if Kafka had been able to finish it.

[Anita]

3 stars

This book is unusual bordering on surreal. Josef K. is accused of a crime, but not imprisoned. He is never actually told what his crime is (nor is the reader informed). The book is about his psychological angst as he tries to figure out how to get extricated from an increasingly obscure web of bureaucracy.

Anyone who has tried to deal with a company that uses a phone tree to screen calls and ultimately lands up speaking to a "customer service rep" in India who is reading verbatim from a script, might have the tiniest sensation of what Josef K. is enduring.

But there are also some clues that Josef isn't necessarily Mr. Upstanding either. His relationships with women all seem overbearing at best.

All in all, this book clearly has a message and a point of view, but it also has a nightmarish quality that makes it unpleasant and somewhat unsatisfying reading. I gave it three stars for a creative premise and it's social commentary on government bureaucracy and tyranny.

[[deleted user]]

The Trial Kafka
4 stars

The surreal story of Josef K who wakes on his 30th birthday to discover he is under arrest for an unspecified crime.

Following his arrest K is allowed to continue with his life almost as usual with the exception that he must now also spend time fighting the chaotic court system without knowing what he is actually fighting against or how best to defend himself.

An interesting read that captures perfectly the experience of an ordinary man trying to make sense of any bureaucracy that may be encountered in normal life. The total frustration of being told "computer says no" with no further recourse available.

[Hilde]

Rating: 4 Stars
Read: November 2015

I read this book in 2015, but it quite stuck with me. I am not sure I really understood everything. Reading this book was like entering into a dream. Not a nice dream, nor a nightmare, but a confusing and surrealistic dream.

The main character Josef K., whom I perceive to be a writer of the author himself, is arrested one morning. But not arrested by the ordinary police, nor arrested in the sense that he is being imprisoned, but it is made clear that a process has been instituted against him. This process does not fade away from the ordinary justice, but of a parallel and immensely extensive legal apparatus, which turns out to fill almost the entire community. In dreamlike sequences, K. is seeking investigation commissions, legal offices, lawyers and others who can help him to orientate himself in the process, but the more he tries to orientate, the more confusing the process becomes.

I do not quite get quite what Kafka tried to explain with this book. Should the process in the book be a picture of something in real life? I thought for a moment that it could be a picture of peoples' chores and expectations of conformity, but are far from sure about this. I read on the internet that it is common to make interpretations of fear and exhortation to this story, but I am not completely agreeing on this. On the other side, Josef K. is showing courage by opposing the process.

The author gave up completing the book long before he died, and the manuscript is to some extent influenced by this. Some chapters are really well written, others seem like endless rumination of points that have been made earlier on in the book. It's a pity and shame that Kafka failed to complete the book as he thought it, but even this unfinished manuscript engages readers closer to 100 years after it was written and probably will long in the future as well. Well done.

[Diane]

The Trial by Franz Kafka
4/5 stars

I did not think I was going to have time to squeeze one more book in this month but I am glad that I did. I really enjoyed this book. Josef K. is a bank executive and is charged with a crime that the reader never learns. Each chapter introduces a new character which somehow relates to his trial and moves the story forward. This is my first Kafka and I am glad to be introduced to this author. His writing style was very enjoyable to read. I am glad that Kafka entrusted his friend Max who was the least likely to destroy his work as instructed.

[Sushicat]

The Trial by Franz Kafka - 3 stars

Josef K is arrested on his 30st birthday and with an unspecified crime. From this point on his life spins out of control, every earnest effort to clear up what he considers a misunderstanding leads to more dire developments. He meets all sorts of people who promise to help him but end up embroiling him all the more in the nightmarish bureaucracy of this weird court.