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<\/a>The Trial<\/a> by Franz Kafka<\/a>\nMy rating: 3 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n
What a strange book. Not until a reader is about half-way through this confusing, frustratingly bland and uncompromising story, do you realise that this is all you are going to get.<\/p>\n
The Hans Christian Andersen story about a king\u2019s suit of clothes is the nearest thing I could think of as a metaphor for this unbelievable tale. Not that Kafka\u2019s novel compares to the plot of \u2018The Emperor\u2019s New Clothes,\u2019 but for me it\u2019s more about the idiomatic fuss that the elite literati seem to have made about Kafka\u2019s book for so very many decades. After all it appears that he did not want his notes about The Trial to be published but he wanted them burnt! However, his friend, Max Brod, went ahead and had it published.<\/p>\n
Maybe what I was reading in an edition from Everyman\u2019s Library suffered a little during translation? Or perhaps Kafka had not got around to writing more in a prologue, which would give more explanation about this obviously dystopian story? Who knows? Obviously the many literary writers and philosophers, et al who have produced much more commentary about the book think they knew what Kafka really intended. May be they could only see the \u201cnew clothes\u201d which the less informed, like me, fail to appreciate.<\/p>\n
At least George Orwell and Aldous Huxley gave the humble reader enough information to gain some understanding about the setting and the atmosphere surrounding their main protagonist, who is attempting to survive within their totalitarian society. Like many readers and reviewers I prefer to read a new book, when I can, enjoying it (or not) based upon my own discoveries etc as I progress through the author\u2019s writing. Where there may be an introduction or a blurb that is much too long, I leave that until later after finishing the book. I do not want to be influenced by a \u2018well-informed\u2019 writer, like George Steiner for example, about what I can expect to find or how I should feel during my reading. This was an interesting and most intriguing novel but it left a lot to be desired for a completely satisfying read. Perhaps it was still too experimental as a dystopian novel? Like other reviewers I was left with too many unanswered questions, suffering from too much pluralistic existentialism? Writers like those mentioned above certainly got it right for me. Their books can be read and re-read over again. But, The Trial? Glad to see it gone.<\/p>\n