The Trial, Franz Kafka
The Trial, Franz Kafka
List: $17.55 | Sale: $12.29
Club: $8.77

The Trial
Penguin Classics

Author: Franz Kafka, Idris Parry, Idris Parry

Narrator: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith

Unabridged: 8 hr 7 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/26/2019

Synopsis

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.

About Franz Kafka

Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century. His unique body of writing-much of which is incomplete and which was mainly published posthumously-is considered to be among the most influential in Western literature. Among his most well known stories are "The Metamorphosis" and "In the Penal Colony," and his novels include The Trial and The Castle.

Reviews

Goodreads review by s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] on September 26, 2023

It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary Nothing speaks a more profound truth than a pristine metaphor… Funny, us, worming through the world ascribing meaning, logic and order to the dumb, blind forces of void. It’s all one can do to maintain sanity in the......more

Goodreads review by Vit on May 15, 2024

Guilt and innocence: Who can be considered innocent and who can be considered guilty? After all, K. lived in a state governed by law, there was universal peace, all statutes were in force; who dared assault him in his own lodgings? The state is an ogre… The citizen is a pygmy… And an ogre can do with......more

Goodreads review by emma on May 15, 2024

It's important, in this life, to have goals. Sure, they are often a lesson in the enduring power of futility, our lack of free will as demonstrated by the ever-present arm of bureaucracy. If your goal, for example, is à la our protagonist's, you will spend several years or 341 pages or the rest of yo......more

Goodreads review by Sean Barrs on October 26, 2016

This book haunts me. I can’t stop thinking about it because I have questions, questions and more questions; I have so many unanswered questions that I will never know the answer to, and it’s slowly killing me! What is the trial? Is K actually guilty or is he innocent? Is this novel a nightmare sequen......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on July 02, 2024

"A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it isn’t open." —Franz Kafka **Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., he knew he had done nothing wrong but, one morning, he was arrested.** This famous opening line becomes yet more intriguing as it pitches us directly into a scene where......more

Quotes

The Dante of the Twentieth Century

This compelling, prophetic novel anticipates the insanity of modern bureaucracy and the coming of totalitarianism

It is the fate and perhaps the greatness of that work that it offers everything and confirms nothing

It was Kafka who made me understand that one can write differently

Add to Cart
Add to Wish List