debbyberry's Full Review: Franz Kafka, George Steiner, Willa Muir, Breon Mit...
The Trial is a very unsettling book because it bridges the gap between two worlds. The first several chapters seem to be in the world of Orwell, particularly 1984: Joseph K. has no idea what he has done wrong, he is never told the charges against him, and it is obvious that nothing he does is going to change the outcome of the trial, but if he doesn't jump through some of the fruitless hoops, the trial has the potential to go even worse for him. The sheer randomness and hopelessness of the book are brilliant and chilling.
For me, however, the real power of the book is that, other than the trial aspects of his life, K's life looks very ordinary. He goes to work, he pursues women, he converses with his uncle. His life looks perfectly ordinary--if only it weren't for the Orwellian nightmare of this darn trial!
The book is not finished; Kafka died before he completed it. I read an edition containing some of the fragments of unfinished or proposed chapters, but the book reads just fine without them. Perhaps it's a little sketchier than he had in mind, but it's still a very effective work. Having just reread this, it's going to be at least a few weeks before I reread any Orwell (or even Thomas Hardy); I think I need to read something light and amusing for a bit.
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