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The Trial

Penguin Classics

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The Trial

By: Franz Kafka, Idris Parry - introduction, Idris Parry - translator
Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
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Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, winner of the 2019 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral.

 Absurdist Classics Dystopian Genre Fiction Political Psychological Science Fiction Fiction
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Critic reviews

The Dante of the Twentieth Century (W. H. Auden)
This compelling, prophetic novel anticipates the insanity of modern bureaucracy and the coming of totalitarianism (The Daily Telegraph)
It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of that work that it offers everything and confirms nothing (Albert Camus)
It was Kafka who made me understand that one can write differently (Gabriel García Márquez)
All stars
Most relevant
The narrator’s creative and playful accents deliver justice by perseving Franz Kafka’s sarcasm and wit.

Throughout the process…

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Did not like narrator, half way through bought another copy with different narration. Book was good.

Could not stand narrator

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I studied Kafka 35 years ago at university and was fascinated by his obsessive, absurd and neurotic view of the world. But it always seemed like a bleak and pessimistic assessment of the human condition. Kafka can be a tough and dull read. The Trial can be a trial.

That’s why I loved the narrator’s performance in this recording. He brings the text to life and adds a humorous interpretation of this pessimism that I had never appreciated before. The regional accents and intense and engaged narration made The Trial more enjoyable than ever for me.

This is my first ever Audible review and it was all to say thank you Kobna Holdbrook-Smith. Bravo!

Wonderful performance

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Superbly sinister, a metaphor for the mystery of life. Josef K. is in an unidentified place, awash in a legal nightmare, where he is arrested without knowing why, and bound fast by a burocratic machine... and as if that's not enough, he keeps getting seduced by incidental women.

Important novel

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Narration was excellent. Kafka expertly illustrates a spirit shattering bureaucratic nightmare that begins to feel like a sentient organism rather than an organisation as the book goes on.

It ends abruptly and in a somewhat unsatisfactory way, but I suppose that's to be expected given the content, it should be expected even more so taking Kafka's other work into consideration.

Franz Kafka's Illustration of Bureaucracy

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