The Trial

by Franz Kafka, Rupert Degas (Read by)

Overview

The Trial is one of the great works of the twentieth century—an extraordinary vision of a man put on trial by an anonymous authority on an unspecified charge.

Josef K., thirty, lives in a large town in an unspecified country when he is summoned to answer a charge and appear in the courtroom for his trial. Franz Kafka evokes all the realities of trial without any of the specifics in a society that seems to have degraded into chaos: a squalid environment, rats, and yellow liquid shooting out of a hole in the wall. Guards, claustrophobia, anxiety—The Trial is a gripping story and an allegory of modern life that remains just as relevant a century after it was written.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781094014883
Publisher:	Naxos
Publication date:	01/14/2020
Edition description:	Unabridged
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

Franz Kafka (1883–1924), one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century, was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing, much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously, is considered by some people to be among the most influential in Western literature, inspiring such writers as Albert Camus, Rex Warner, and Samuel Beckett.

Rupert Degas, winner of numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards, has recorded the works of Peter Carey, Haruki Murakami, Andy McNab, Darren Shan, and Derek Landy, among others. He has also recorded over fifty radio productions including The Gemini Apes, The Glittering Prizes, This Sceptered Isle, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He has appeared on film and television in Dead Romantic, EastEnders, Waiting for God, Passport to Murder, Over Here, Fatherland, The Cappuccino Years, Exorcist: The Beginning, Love Soup and Shoot the Messenger. He has also lent his voice to numerous animated films and series including Mr. Bean, Bob the Builder, Robotboy, and The Amazing World of Gumball. Along with several stints in Newsrevue at the Canal Café Theatre and in Edinburgh, he has appeared on the London stage in The Boys Next Door, Are We There Yet?, Becket, Stones in His Pockets, and Patrick Barlow’s adaptation of The 39 Steps. He lives in Sydney, Australia.

Date of Birth:

July 3, 1883

Date of Death:

June 3, 1924

Place of Birth:

Prague, Austria-Hungary

Place of Death:

Vienna, Austria

Education:

German elementary and secondary schools. Graduated from German Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague.

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
Chapter 11
	The Arrest
	Conversation with Frau Grubach
	Then Fraulein Burstner
Chapter 231
	First Interrogation
Chapter 349
	In the Empty Courtroom
	The Student
	The Offices
Chapter 474
	Fraulein Burstner's Friend
Chapter 583
	The Whipper
Chapter 691
	K.'s Uncle
	Leni
Chapter 7113
	Lawyer
	Manufacturer
	Painter
Chapter 8166
	Block, the Tradesman
	Dismissal of the Lawyer
Chapter 9197
	In the Cathedral
Chapter 10223
	The End
Appendix I	The Unfinished Chapters
	On the Way to Elsa	233
	Journey to His Mother	235
	Prosecuting Counsel	239
	The House	245
	Conflict with the Assistant Manager	250
	A Fragment	256
Appendix II	The Passages Delected by the Author	257
Appendix III	Postscripts
	To the First Edition (1925)	264
	To the Second Edition (1935)	272
	To the Third Edition (1946)	274
Appendix IV	Excerpts from Kafka's Diaries	275

What People are Saying About This

Albert Camus

We are taken to the limits of human thought. Indeed, everything in this work is, in the true sense, essential. It states the problem of the absurd in its entirety.

W.H. Auden

Had one to name the author who comes nearest to bearing the same kind of relation to our age as Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe bore to theirs, Kafka is the first one would think of.

Walter Abish

An accomplishment of the highest order — one that will honor Kafka, perhaps the most singular and compelling writer of our time, far into the 21st century.
— Author of How German Is It

Introduction

This short novel has passed into far more than classical literary status...In more than 100 languages, the epithet 'kafkaesque' attaches to the central images, to the constants of inhumanity and absurdity in our times...In this diffusion of the kafkaesque into so many recesses of our private and public existence, The Trial plays a commanding role.
— From the Introduction

Editorial Reviews

The Barnes & Noble Review
This classic novel by Kafka tells the terrifying tale of Joseph K., a respectable banker who is suddenly arrested and must defend his innocence against a charge about which he can get no information. The Trial stands as one of the great novels of modern times, as it rings with a chilling truth about modern bureaucracy and the mad agendas of 20th century totalitarian regimes.

The Trial is not for everybody, and its peculiar air of excitement will seem flat enough to those who habitually feed on 'exciting' books. It belongs not with the many novels that horrify, but with the many fewer which terrify.
— Books of the Century; New York Times review, October 1937

Louis Kronenberger

An overly pretentious tale with an extensive cast of characters that gathers at the funeral of Hollywood's least favorite producer, West of Paradise suffers from the lack of a centrally solid idea or developed player to hold it together. Neophyte writer Kate Donnelly, who crashes the funeral, is not strong or interesting enough nor blessed with the necessary critical eye to make the novel and its cast work. Davis dares to invoke the name of F. Scott Fitzgerald as Kate's muse, and the only mildly intriguing idea here may be the pretense that she is his long-lost relative. The stereotypes are tired, and the limited plot too predictable. Susan O'Malley's reading is, fortunately, on the brisk side. Not recommended.--Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

The Trial (1924), whose cryptic portrayal of a bank clerk detained and interrogated for an undisclosed offense has become perhaps the dominant image of modernist 'absurdity' — holds up well in a version characterized by long, crowded paragraphs and virtually incantatory accusatory repetitions that confer equal emphasis on the novel's despairing comedy and aura of unspecific menace. Admirers of Kafka's fiction will not want to miss it.

Kirkus Reviews

‘[I]t seemed as though the shame was to outlive him.’ With these words The Trial ends. Kafka’s shame then is no more personal than the life and thought which govern it and which he describes thus: ‘He does not live for the sake of his own life, he does not think for the sake of his own thought. He feels as though he were living and thinking under the constraint of a family . . . Because of this unknown family . . . he cannot be released.’”
—Walter Benjamin
 
“Breon Mitchell’s translation is an accomplishment of the highest order that will honor Kafka far into the twenty-first century.”
—Walter Abish, author of How German Is It

From the Publisher

In Kafka’s iconic novel, bank functionary Josef K., arrested on unspecified charges, is swallowed up by a bizarre legal system with incomprehensible motives and purposes—a mix of Carrollian absurdity, Eastern European oppression, and nightmare. Rupert Degas’s voice acting is understated and telling. His tones are varied and expressive, but appropriately grayed or minor keyed, giving the impression of an intimate, dreamlike, and vaguely threatening whisper. The reading is very British—with names pronounced as German (with an excellent accent), including K. pronounced as “KAH.” That choice, while linguistically correct, may result in listeners missing the significance of Kafka’s choice of the initial “K,” as displayed in text. Still, the fine blend of performance and text is a menacing, seductive cocktail. W.M. © AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2011 - AudioFile