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    The Trial
    The Trial
    The Trial
    Audiobook8 hours

    The Trial

    Written by Franz Kafka

    Narrated by Todd McLaren

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    First published in 1925, The Trial tells the story of a man arrested for an unknown crime by a remote, inaccessible authority and his struggle for control over the increasing absurdity of his life. One of Franz Kafka's best-known works, The Trial has been variously interpreted as an examination of political power, a satirical depiction of bureaucracy, and a pessimistic religious parable. Left unfinished at the time of Kafka's 1924 death, The Trial is nevertheless a trenchant depiction of the seemingly incomprehensible nature of existence and a fascinating exploration of the universal issues of justice, power, freedom, and isolation.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJun 30, 2011
    ISBN9781452673486
    Author

    Franz Kafka

    Franz Kafka (Praga, 1883 - Kierling, Austria, 1924). Escritor checo en lengua alemana. Nacido en el seno de una familia de comerciantes judíos, se formó en un ambiente cultural alemán y se doctoró en Derecho. Su obra, que nos ha llegado en contra de su voluntad expresa, pues ordenó a su íntimo amigo y consejero literario Max Brod que, a su muerte, quemara todos sus manuscritos, constituye una de las cumbres de la literatura alemana y se cuenta entre las más influyentes e innovadoras del siglo xx. Entre 1913 y 1919 escribió El proceso, La metamorfosis y publicó «El fogonero». Además de las obras mencionadas, en Nórdica hemos publicado Cartas a Felice.

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    Reviews for The Trial

    4/5

    131 ratings97 reviews

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    • 5/5
      It's a mind-warp. The ending feels so profound. And, yet, the hopelessness of it all...
    • 5/5
      When I first read Kafka’s The Trial I was fascinated. 40 years on I find it still as fascinating, the more so in fact, because I have had many years in the meantime to confirm how, despite its nightmarish qualities, it is a very realistic work. That is to say, it reflects very accurately the real world and the real hopes and fears we humans entertain every day.You’ll say that I speak for myself! and that not everyone is a neurotic, or is delusional or paranoid. True. But elements of The Trial apply to most people, although I suppose there may be some who never in their whole lives have been beset by a worry that has stayed with them a considerable time, and which has grown stronger and more insidious over that time. If there are people like that, I haven’t met them. And I’m not one of them!The novel is an almost clinical case study of the way an individual can be destroyed by circumstances beyond his control, especially when he begins by thinking that he CAN control events. One of the most affecting parts of the book is K’s early confidence that HE can take charge and wrap things up quickly. Hence his arrogance in addressing the ‘court, which is held in a very bizarre location: ‘He was given the number of the house where he had to go, it was a house in an outlying suburban street where he had never been before’.As regards the ‘court’ itself, all its musty, pedantic and beaurocratic nature comes through strongly and reminds one of the ‘circumlocution office’ in Dickens’s Little Dorrit. I am not aware that Kafka (1883-1924) knew anything of Dickens (1812-1870) and so this aspect of their work would seem to be an example of two extraordinary writers ‘zooming in’ on aspect of social organisation’ with equal extraordinary effect ( though maybe Kafka has a slight edge in ‘nightmarishness’?). Both have contributed their names to the language in the form of powerful adjectives.I have to say that this book has been a personal favorite with me over the years and when I said above that I find it ‘fascinating’ I am using the word its strict sense of ’attract or influence irresistibly’ Like everyone else, I have had some personal experience of situations in which one feels an overpowering sense of helplessness. Kafka’s device of having his character overcome by weakness and a sense of suffocation is extremely effective, not least because it reflects the actual psychosomatic symptoms that one often experiences in situation like this. There is too the feeling that anything one does will only make the situation worse, so the best idea would be to sit still and wait out events. But this is very hard to do because things may be getting worse anyway, and just BECAUSE one is doing nothing. And so perhaps one should intervene…And so on. A really fine novel, tightly written and extraordinarily perceptive of the human condition, and one which can never be ‘outdated’. The only true parallel in my reading that I can think of is Orwell’s 1984. Humour too, though of the dark kind.To use a word that is considerably overused and abused: The Trial is a work of genius. One of my all-time favourite novels. [Translated from the German - Der Prozess (published posthumously 1925) - by Willa and Edwin Muir (1936)].
    • 1/5
      I couldn't understand Kafka 30 years ago & he makes no more sense nowRead in Samoa May 2003
    • 2/5
      I started reading this aaaages ago, and finally finished it by skimming through. I don't know what it is -- maybe the translation, maybe just Kafka's style -- but I found it more infuriating and frustrating than anything. I enjoyed the dark humour, but I don't think this style of completely absurd situation is for me, and I couldn't judge on the quality of Kafka's writing from this translation. Maybe if, someday, I learn German...

      It probably doesn't help that I'm in bed recovering from food poisoning, so perhaps you should take my opinion with a pinch of salt. Still, however important it is in a literary sense, I can't say I enjoyed it.
    • 2/5
      I listened to the audio book narrated by someone Degas. I found the whole book extremely annoying. I probably missed lots of deep and meaningful stuff, but I found K annoying and selfish and I didn't like the way nearly all the women were falling over themselves to help him. I found there was a lot of "K thought x. It was of course true that blah, blah, blah. However, K still thought x."

      I might have appreciated the book more if I had read it rather than listening to the audio book. However, the library only had the audio book.
    • 5/5
      Why was Joseph K taken, enough to keep you gripped. Luckily there is no such thing as rendition in these enlightened days!
    • 3/5
      This was quite a unique book in the way the author describes the events surrounding the main character. Very surreal in a way and you get the impression that the author is trying to show his impression of things in more ways than the direct occurrence of what he's writing about. It's not an easy read but I found many of the passages very interesting and absorbing.
    • 5/5
      Re-reading The Trial in the Breon Mitchell translation of the restored edition was a big improvement over the original Muirs' translation. Although I still prefer Kafka's shorter, published work like The Metamorphosis, In the Penal Colony and The Hunger Artist, all of which seem perfect to me while The Trial has a lot of rougher edges. One can only wonder what Kafka would have done with them if he actually published the work.

      This reading of The Trial also had considerably more farce and humor, especially in all of the descriptions of minutiae, and felt more like a successor to Gogol than I had previously remembered. And it is also a reminder that just about everything that anyone terms Kafkaesque is capturing at most one or two facets of the very multidimensional, strange original combination that Kafka himself provided.
    • 2/5
      I’ve come to the conclusion that the word “kafkaesque” has been abused by our society, most notably by pseudo-intellectuals describing any concept they feel is beyond the scope of one’s understanding. Do me a favor, the next time someone uses the word improperly, kick that person in his/her junk. It seems to me that the term carries with it characteristics that extend beyond the bizarre. I understand that the definition is rather fluid, but it should be held to some sort of standard. It’s sort of like children learning to talk. They see a dog and learn the word, then use it to describe a cow. Your dream was probably just weird. Your boss is probably just illogical. You probably pressed the wrong number on the telephone menu. You’re probably just unhappy that Democrats have control of the White House.Here’s what I think. Based on the book I read, I think that in order for something to be “kafkaesque,” a few rules must be followed:1)One must be faced with a situation in which he/she doesn’t know how to proceed2)One must not be able to see what is going to happen to him/her next3)There is no chance for the the person involved to escape his/her present situation4)Control of the situation remains in the hands of intangible, illogical forcesWhen I read more Kafka, I may revise these standards. But, for now, these words will be law. If you dislike them, please file a petition with the court.And on to the book…For the most part, it was boring. It was a tale of frustration with bureaucracy. A completely strange bureaucracy, but a bureaucracy nonetheless. I took a lot for me to trudge through it. The events struck me as interesting, but not enthralling. I really enjoyed the piece where K. converses about his case to the priest. I liked the implications of the priest’s various analyses of the story he told to K. It was at this point that I realized how K.’s rigidity was impacting his case and likely would result in his demise. I also enjoyed the end. Throughout the book, I dismissed the court as inconsequential. However, the final display of the court’s power was very surprising to me. I don’t know if I’d recommend this to anyone. I’m glad I read it, but I’m also glad I’ve finished with it.
    • 4/5
      The only other piece that I've read by Kafka is "Metamorphosis" which is not one of my favorites, even though I can see its literary merits. I wasn't sure what to expect when reading this book, and probably never would have picked it up if it weren't for the group read in which I was participating. Now I'm grateful for that push, because the book was an intense reading experience, quite different from his famous short story, and a good indicator of Kafka's style. I never really knew what "kafka-esque" meant before now.The story is about a man who is accused of a crime, prosecuted, and sentenced, but in this strange totalitarian society, it's not as simple as it seems. First of all, he never learns what his crime is supposed to be. In fact, when he tries to question the police officers he is branded as being difficult and resistant to arrest. As he proceeds through the various ranks of individuals connected to this judicial system, he is constantly told to do what is right, but chastised when he asks what the right thing to do is, and the only clear answer is that what is right, according to law, is not necessarily morally good. In fact, in the first half of the book I was outraged on his behalf, because so many unjust things occur to him or around him.As the story continues, though, the absurdity of this society K lives in becomes so overwhelming that I stopped being angry. The settings start to take on a surreal slant, and it's hard to believe that this is representing any real location anymore. For instance, the important judicial offices are located in the lowest slums, up endless staircases and down dark hallways, until you stumble upon a crowded and dirty court room that can determine the fate of a man's life. Or the scene where a man tosses a woman over his shoulder and runs off, and K follows in pursuit, trying to fight him and discussing his case, all while this guy is still running with a woman on his back.That scene was too bizarre. Eventually, images of endless hallways and shifting stairways filled my head. It all had a surreal feel of one of those labyrinths where the walkways are constantly shifting, representing the endless bureaucracy of this society that is a bewildering maze. Then there was the behavior of K himself. His attitude towards women was rather horrid. I began to wonder if he hadn't done something wrong, after all, and we the readers were being kept in the dark. Maybe, on the other hand, I was succumbing to the system just as K did: he offered resistance to the injustice at first, and gradually accepted that he had to play by heir rules if he hoped to be saved; I was outraged at everything initially, and then began to question whether K wasn't guilty after all. Regardless of his blame, though, the fact remains that the way the judicial system treated him was unjust and ridiculous. This book is a scything indictment on totalitarian communities, and actually, on every society, actually, where the political system has built enough layers of bureaucracy and pointless policies to be an impasse to the common man. This tale of a man helpless to escape his fate against unknown and faceless enemies is not an uplifting read, but nevertheless a fascinating one.
    • 4/5
      The Trial is a compelling read, but also frustrating. Questions are never answered and your left scream WHY???? K wakes up to find out he is being arrested, he is never told why, he is free to go about his daily life as long as when he is summoned to the court he comes. He tries to dismiss the trial as nothing more than a shady court system trying to get a bribe out of him. More people learn of his trial and he begins to take it more serious. K explores options and meets other people on trial. The ending will mess you up.

      So what is the point of The Trial? There are lots of meanings that can be placed to what is read. Bureaucracy, a variety of metaphors the trial represents, or simply nothing but the text that is provided. Either way its a great short read that is interesting til the end. I didn’t know how I felt at the ending, was just kind of lost for a feeling, but I think that feeling of not know what I am feeling fits well with The Trial.
    • 2/5
      I get the importance of this story - especially for the time and place where it was written but frankly, for me this was a real slog. Reminiscent in style to Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, (another book I did not really care for), the narrative follows the doomed Josef K. as he is arrested and put on trial. But the proceedings are exceptionally surreal and the story is populated with many odd characters with whom I found it difficult to empathize. As a result, I was not amused or entertained. For me, that equates to a fail.
    • 4/5
      Where does Franz Kafka get his ideas? Everyone knows Metamorphosis and The Trial is no different. It has been made into theater productions, television shows and movies. Everything Kafka has ever written has been analyzed within an inch of its life so I will not be able to add anything new with my review of The Trial. In one sentence, The Trial is about a man on trial for an unknown crime. The end. Why Josef K was indicted is a mystery; why he was convicted is even more so. What is so haunting about The Trial is the tone of voice. The frightening subject matter is told in such a robotic, matter of fact manner. The outrage just isn't there.
    • 5/5
      This is a nearly flawless audiobook, read in a mostly dry tone that is both funny and creepy, which I imagine was what Kafka was going for in this his iconic work. Hell may be the absence of reason. But Hell can have a reason all its own, which we discover too late.
    • 4/5
      A very memorable reading experience.
    • 4/5
      The Trial is a fascinating novel. One can take it in several different ways---for instance, as a quasi-surrealist satire on the early-20th century German legal system (which is unfortunately in some ways relevant to the early-21st century American reader), or as a proto-absurdist metaphysical parable.It was definitely not what I expected. I imagined it would largely be about, well, an actual trial, but the protagonist Josef K. never actually gets his final hearing, though a judgment is reached in his absence and his sentence carried out. The translator explains that this is because the German word for "trial" encompasses all the legal proceedings leading up to and surrounding what we would think of in English as the trial proper. So the book mainly follows K.'s utterly ineffectual attempts to navigate the legal system, though he never even manages to learn what crime he is accused of.Toward the end, a priest from the court tells K. a story (a parable within a parable, so to speak, though Kafka published it as an independent story) about a man who spends his whole life waiting outside his personal gateway into the Law, but never gains admittance through it. They then engage in a long discussion explicating it, which concludes with K.'s statement that "Lies are made into a universal system." Kafka immediately tells us that this was not his final judgment, because he was too tired to take in all the consequences of the story...but this qualification is perhaps an ironic one, since it is in fact the final statement K. gives about it, and considering K.'s own ultimate fate.Unlike Kafka's other unfinished novels (such as The Castle, which simply ends abruptly), The Trial is a complete story, Kafka just never revised it into a final form for publication. Still, it is for that reason among others probably the most readable of his major unfinished works (or, for that matter, of many of his finished ones).Breon Mitchell's translation of this edition is excellent as far as I can judge without being able to read the original myself, and his discussion of his principles and his version's difference from the previous translation is very illuminating, even of the meaning of the novel itself. And George Guidall is perfectly suited to the narration, so I would definitely recommend this audio edition as a good way to experience this strange, funny, sad, frightening novel.
    • 2/5
      Listening to unabridged audio.
      23 Feb 11: Praise be. I'm done listening to this. It was torture. I get (I think) what Kafka was trying to say that the law is so complex at times that it is completely inaccessible to 'normal' people, even smart successful ones. Or maybe he wasn't trying to say anything at all.

      Like I said before, I disliked the characters - all of them - and I found the on-going conspiracy - reaching the edges of everything - irritating.

      Has anyone else read this one? Maybe they want to explain it to me?
      18 Feb 11: Ch. 7? 8? : I totally hate all the characters. This may be part of the reason I'm feeling lethargic about law school -- it reads a bit like 'Alice in Wonderland'... in court.

    • 3/5
      There was something about this book that kept me from connecting with it in an emotional way, perhaps if this is a life experience that you can relate to on a personal level this story would quickly entice you, if not there is no real structural criticism to novel that is overtly distracting. Yet I found myself wandering and wondering subconsciously if there were allusions or aphorisms that i was not privilege too. This is still an excellent read, don't over think it.
    • 5/5
      K is up the creek and he does not know why. Like most of Kafka's novels, the premise is much better than the execution. I think Pinter did a better job of this theme with The Birthday Party, but that is me.
    • 5/5
      A nightmarish tale about the labyrinth of bureaucracy and the alienation of the self against power. A scary book and a must-read for everyone. Extremely original. Flawless construction. A masterpiece in every sense. Essential to understand the very meaning of the word "kafkian".
    • 5/5
      The Trial reveals how we are the ultimate creators of our realities. Both consciously and unconsciously, our deemed realities are based off of delusions and phantasy. "Reality" is that which we choose to perceive. There's a tendency to blame tangible, external occurrences for our condition when, in truth, the crimes and punishments reside within ourselves. We are the prosecutors, the judges, the jury, the criminals, the victims, etc.

      This is a vivid portrayal of the agonizing sufferings one experiences when all they strive for is to get away from the terror that surrounds them, only to realize that this terror 'is' them. Protagonist and antagonist become one in a battle of self-conflictions.
    • 2/5
      The Trial by Franz Kafka (1925)

      I'm having a difficult time with this book. Aside from it being written back in 1925 in German, the author never finished it at that time. Essentially, it is about a man who wakes up to find he is arrested for a crime that is never specified. It almost feels like a dog chasing its tail...I wonder how this trial will proceed with the rantings from this narcissistic protagonist. It is rather amusing how he defends himself against a crime to which he has no knowledge of committing!

      Having done some research it seems that this book was finished by someone else hence the lack of continuity or direction in this book.
    • 3/5
      First thing.. this book was unfinished and published after his death, and it reads that way. I can't imagine this is what Kafka would have wanted the world to read. But here we are. The only thing I would like to add to what has been written already is that our protagonist K's behavior is rarely mentioned. He's an idiot. The system he is in is oppressive and capricious but his own behavior is inexplicable and frustrating. I can appreciate this book for its historical context in literature but it's not a "good read".
    • 3/5
      The Trial by Franz Kafka is one of the masterpieces of existential literature. Or so it is said. Since I'm not up to date on my existential philosophy, the book was largely wasted on me. It's always a challenge to read books that come at life from a different world view than one's own, but to give them a fair chance requires wrestling with their philosophical underpinnings. I'm not at a point in my reading life or my intellectual life where I'm interested in exploring the existential experiences described by Franz Kafka in The Trial.Kafka certainly knows how to create atmosphere and bring a story to life, but the problems for me were the absurdist plot and the unappealing main character, Josef K. While I admire Kafka's craft as a writer, and acknowledge The Trial as an important work of literature, it's simply not to my taste at this stage of my life.
    • 5/5
      Kafka's terrifying masterpiece that perfectly sums up the feeling of being in court. Although unfinished, The Trial has enough in it to let you know that it is a one-of-a-kind book of the first order. A somewhat similar book to this, Darkness At Noon, was published but it honestly doesn't come close to matching this book which is not allegory, not satire, not speculative. It just is. Perhaps there is no sadism greater than the mental torture of a trial in which you don't know what you're being charged with, where anything you say could further indict you, where you don't know how long the trial will last, and you don't know the extent to which the people of which you are in the power will use their authority. In truth this novel is also the ultimate expression of the legally-sanctioned sadomasochism in which people participate willingly. To believe something like this couldn't happen here is pure naivete, especially in the face of the fact that it does happen each and every day. It's perhaps the most slashing and visceral portrait of a system rotten to the core ever committed to paper. The lacuna (a skip from one of the book's chapters to the very end) evokes perhaps the greatest known literary loss of the 20th century. Savage to no known bounds, The Trial is absolutely one of the pinnacle examples of the 20th century novel.
    • 5/5
      K was accused of an undisclosed crime, based on a hidden law, by an unreachable court. Trying to uncover his crime, he encountered gatekeepers dedicated to blocking his eyes from not only the crime but also the law. At first, shocked or tickled by such a nightmare, the reader soon realized that his biases, prejudices and presumptions are those of K and that to the court administrators, K was the lunatic whose delusion had clouded his eyes. How could we be guilty of violating a law we don’t know of? How could there be a crime without a law? Perhaps K was guilty of holding onto such biases as logic and causality or merely of existing. Whether he understood the law or accepted the sentence, he couldn’t avoid the punishment just as a boy couldn’t avoid growing up.Locating the crime, the law or the court pales against our discovering the colored glasses with which we see the sea and the sky, the banknote and the meatloaf, Napoleon and Genghis Khan, or for that matter, the man or woman in the mirror. We created natural laws to rein in protons and electrons; we created civil laws to rein in John and Jane; we created ecclesiastical canons to rein in God. Then we organized these absolute truths to rein in our fears, hopes and humanity. So once in a while we should enjoy the shock as from The Trial and realize that we still could create absolute truths when we’re bored texting or twittering.
    • 3/5
      I began reading The Trial mostly because it is the sort of book that you feel you should read, and that impression was mostly unchanged upon finishing it.The plot of The Trial is probably well-known even to those who have never read it. On the morning of his thirtieth birthday, Josef K. is arrested. The charges are never revealed to him, and Josef K. must attempt to defend himself against unknown charges in the face of an obscured and foreboding legal system.Ultimately, The Trial is a book about which I have little to say. It was certainly a worthwhile read if only to gain a greater understanding of what it means to be “Kafkaesque.” Perhaps my biggest complaint is that Kafka’s purpose seemed to be to make a point rather than to make a point through telling a story. Of course, the fact that The Trial remained unfinished on Kafka’s death more than likely contributes to this feeling.In short: when I read the last page of The Trial, I was glad to have read it, but I was even more glad to have finished it. And that probably says everything that needs to be said.
    • 4/5
      "Like a dog!" Never has a final line been so memorable, or so quotable. I was blown away when I first read "The Trial," arguable Kafka's greatest novel (though I personally have a soft spot for "The Castle"). Bureaucracy has never been quite so frightening!
    • 4/5
      The Trial is a compelling read, but also frustrating. Questions are never answered and your left scream WHY???? K wakes up to find out he is being arrested, he is never told why, he is free to go about his daily life as long as when he is summoned to the court he comes. He tries to dismiss the trial as nothing more than a shady court system trying to get a bribe out of him. More people learn of his trial and he begins to take it more serious. K explores options and meets other people on trial. The ending will mess you up.

      So what is the point of The Trial? There are lots of meanings that can be placed to what is read. Bureaucracy, a variety of metaphors the trial represents, or simply nothing but the text that is provided. Either way its a great short read that is interesting til the end. I didn?t know how I felt at the ending, was just kind of lost for a feeling, but I think that feeling of not know what I am feeling fits well with The Trial.
    • 4/5
      It's saddening that such a wonderful criticism of bureaucracy has existed for a lesser amount of time than the bureaucracy it laments.