Sunday, 30 September 2018

The Trial, book review. (Franz Kafka)

Errr! Lost in translation, or, maybe not!
Okay then, Kafka's, The Trial, was exactly that to read, a trial; of my patience, my sanity and my time.
If this was dystopian or Sci-Fi, it might make more sense, but as far as I could tell, the book was set at the time it was written and in Europe, not some skewed alternate universe, which was how the book read.
Josef K is arrested at his home but not told by the guards why. Nor is he told by their supervisor or anybody else for that matter, so he goes through the entire book not knowing who has accused him of what and with no idea of how to defend himself.
He meets random people in lofts (court chambers that double as people’s bedrooms), an advocate who's been working on another man's case for five years with no resolution, a priest who seems to know him and his case, but not enough to actually tell him anything useful, and several women who are all attractive, and become instantly attracted to him!!!
On top of this, you get paragraphs that extend to over a page where two or more people are talking about multiple topics, and I had to wonder, if anyone else wrote something as disjointed as this book, whether they would they ever get it published? (That’s a No by the way).
I know that some of you might take umbrage at my views, that some of you are far more intelligent than me, (or smoked the right drugs), and will say that I just didn’t get it, but I would question, what is there to get? To me the whole thing was just one big confusion, where no-one seemed to know what the hell was going on, and another thing, everyone seemed to be poor, even Josef K, a successful banker, lived in a small rented room in a tenement building, as did the advocate, which again, made me wonder whether this book should be dystopian.
Anyway, in conclusion: don’t bother with Kafka’s, The Trial, read something else.

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