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Summary: Prepare to have your beliefs shattered.
Review: The dim, vague, existentialist perspective throws the main character -- K. -- and the reader into a world so frighteningly shallow, and so dark that the ominous setting even penetrates the mind. The world is cold, and K., being a part of this world, doesn't have the power to contemplate it. K. is condemned, for reasons left unexplained, and travels through this complicated and confused world. Franz Kafka is incredible, because he hasn't just written about people, he's written about a place where people are almost incomprehensibly different. Yet at the same time it shows such a similarity to our own lives. Actions occur without reasons, and when you step back, the entire novel seems to be full of pointless characters. But when you step back from your own life, you'll draw so many parallels between it and the book. This may just be one of the most terrifying novels I have ever read, not because the subject is frightening, but because it puts that dim feeling into your own life. There are so many ways to interpret Kafka, but no matter how you do, his novels and short stories will leave your mind spinning. This is not light reading. This is a book that will make you look at life and everything around you differently. Prepare to have your beliefs shattered. Highly recommended.
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Summary: My Introduction to Kafka
Review: I liked the Trial. In my quest to read the top 100 fiction books of the last century, I picked up what is probably Kafka's seminal work. (this was listed at number 92) I found this book to be a somewhat poignant discussion of how our society judges people, how perception is reality, and how in life, you rarely get a fair trial. I also saw Kafka's work as unique and unlike any of the other books I've read on the top 100 list. Kafka's style is straight-forward and concise and his sentences are packed with meaning. There really isn't a lot of superfluous verbiage or flowery, overly-descriptive prose. As with most of the classics, this book is worthwhile if you're looking to get something out of it beyond the storyline.
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Summary: Sorry about my english...
Review: When I was a little kid and read the castle for the first time (I was a nerdy kid), I felt a little disappointed, because the story didn't have an end, but let me with a funny sensation. I knew the book was trying to say something more than a mere story, it was something way deeper. In less than a year I read all I could find by Kafka, and when I started literature in college, and the teachers taught us that Kafka was one of the most influential of the authors, I wasn't surprised at all, since I could notice his influence in many other important writers that came after him.
I can't really criticize the translation, since my English is not the best, but reading it, was a very enjoyable experience.
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Summary: Very Heavy
Review: I have read many of Franz Kafka's short stories, and after reading _The Trial_, I can say with confidence that he is one of the heaviest writers of the 20th Century. There are very few moments of levity in his writings. _The Trial_ is the story of Josef K., who goes through a year long trial without ever knowing what the crime is that he has committed. On his year long odyssey he gets into very philosophical discussions with people from all realms of life. This novel is basically a rage against the bureaucracy in the world, but at the same time, it offers no way to cure this bureaucracy; it is something that we just have to deal with. I have to agree with Franz on this one; the best in human nature is not what prevails in government, and to fight against it is nearly impossible. Kafka doesn't completely shut the door on change, he just tells of its difficulty. This book is great. The different perspectives you are allowed to hear on a lot of different issues make this an enjoyable read, and a very educational read, even if you don't agree with some the character's ideas.
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Summary: Who is innocent?
Review: The Trial is definately the best book I have ever read, though I do love Kafka's other works as well. I keep coming back to The Trial, over and over again, it's a book you can read a thousand times, and never be sick of. Kafka brings you in to his world of confusion and angst, through this amazing story. The words make you feel the way the main character, Josef K. feels, and enables you to imagine yourself in his situation. The Trial makes you think about your own life, and what "innocence" really means. I strongly recommend this book to any literature lover, Kafka lover - or anyone really. This is a book written by one of the most important authors of our history, a must-read.
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Summary: a haunting masterpiece
Review: What I admire most about Kafka's writing is that long after the last chapter is read, the story still haunts you. While philosopher to some and writer to others, he never fails to creep into the deepest levels of reader's mind, and remain there, waiting for interpretations. "The Trial" ("Der Prozess") is truly one of the most magnificent writings of his. Patronizing, lingering and poignant, this novel is timeless. Perhaps it is so because many feel that humanity is put on trial through his words, perhaps because each of us has become or is destined to become Joseph K. defending our case against the Court, never knowing the charges, victimized and stalked by ignorance and compassion of others, and regardless of all attempts to investigate the investigators, found guilty and sacrificed. The novel also startles the reader with echoing annotations from Kafka's just as evocative writings, such as "Country Doctor" ("Ein Landarzt") and "In the Penal Colony" ("In der Strafkolonie"). To me, it is a book to be read again and again and again.
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Summary: Kafka's Wieeeeeerd!
Review: Franz Kafka was a bit odd. He only published his short stories in his lifetime, and requested that his novels be burned after his death. Thank God his friend had them published instead. This short novel "The Trial" is unfinished, but it seems finished. It's his second and last novel. I think they're both technically unfinished, actually. Anyway, in this novel "The Trial", a man named Joseph K. is charged and arrested, but he never knows what he's been charged with or why he's been arrested. And one absurdity follows another. This tale is a powerful warning and the logical extreme of what bureaucracy can look like when wedded to totalitarianism. He never sees a judge, never appears in a high court, yet at his trial he was convicted and that's that!? He is executed by officials, chased down and killed like a dog in the street. David Rehak
author of "Love and Madness"
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Summary: Belasco - 3rd Quarter Outside Reading - The Trial
Review: I found The Trial to be thoroughly enjoyable and absolutely one of Kafka's best. I found myself absorbed in the captivating storyline but the analyses involved within the story were what I found truly intriguing. The novel analyzed both the judicial system and the human mind. When K. finds out that he has been arrested, he cannot figure out what it is for. He has done nothing for which to be arrested and was claimed fraudulently by a vile court. However, no one is free of guilt so he continues to ponder what he may have done until the end of the novel. This displays the untrustworthiness of the judicial system and, more importantly, the guilt and paranoia that is constantly existent in the human mind. The full understanding and appreciation of this novel involves extensive thinking and regardless of how well the reader understands it, he or she will surely still be a little bemused with unanswered questions at the end. However, when understood and considered, this story can bring a new outlook to the reader's life, like it did to mine. The Trial is interesting throughout and thought provoking even after finishing.
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Summary: Franz Kafka's The Trial--"Before the Law."
Review: The Trial, written by Franz Kafka and published posthumously by Kafka's best friend, Max Brod, is hailed as Kafka's best work, and rightly so. Though The Castle outclasses it when it comes to emotional sincerity and autobiographical thought, The Trial is, obviously, a more complete and focused work than is The Castle. The Trial, Kafka's second novel, is about K., a clerk who is arrested one morning for a crime that he is unaware of and will not be told of, and the consequent dealings with this arrest, leading up to climatic execution of K. Though K. has no idea why he is being arrested and will not be told, he never even asks the authority what crime he has committed. His questions are always too many ahead or behind--he never asks the questions that he should ask, and thus, is kept in the dark until his blind death. K.'s lack of inquiry to the authorities is in itself Kafkaesque--it observes K.'s personal absurdity whilst dealing with public absurdity--a labyrinth upon labyrinth of the impenetrability of the law and the mindset one must enter to even fathom it. Franz Kafka's writings have foretold or duly documented every political absurdity and grotesqueness that has befallen the world at large. Kafka, who wrote The Trial in 1914, prophesied the imminent rise of the Nazi regime and the Third Reich that swept Europe less than a decade after his death. The Trial, as does The Castle, tells the story of a totalitarian government which keeps its citizens in the dark and apart from the leading administration's political authority, Kafka, a Jew, died in the mid-1920's from tuberculosis, but some of his close relatives were actually killed in the concentration camps.
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Summary: I Shall Make This As Terse As Possible
Review: Many have expatiated at length about the existential subtext of this book, about its philosophical inclinations, its ideas, and ultimately its purpose. While I was mildly amused by some of Kafka's earlier short stories (Metamorphosis), I found The Trial to be tremendously entertaining. Some despise the book because of its seeming purposelessness. Indeed, I was somewhat fatigued by the first 20 pages or so, but I found that the pace and the intrigue picked up nicely along the way, right up to the nightmarish conclusion. If you want to speculate about its intent, go on, but I merely enjoyed what I thought was a fantastic story by a writer I had once dismissed. Enjoy. Or don't. There barely seems an existant middle ground with Kafka.
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