I read this and Metamorphosis side by side with Mein Kampf during high school, incorrectly assuming that Kafka was living during the totalitarian regimes.

It's an incredibly plausible idea. The Trial absolutely stinks of injustice, confusion, and chaos, which many experienced in the war. Kafka seems to have led the target with this book, intentionally or not.

I comfortably settled on the idea that this book could offer little non-prophetic value. The author wrote too obscurely and left too many questions unanswered. ( )

Great book; extremely confussing; you will not find what you're probably expecting. Surprisingly funny. ( )

Schocken Books publishes the best editions of Kafkas monumental works. ( )

There was something about this book that kept me from connecting with it in an emotional way, perhaps if this is a life experience that you can relate to on a personal level this story would quickly entice you, if not there is no real structural criticism to novel that is overtly distracting. Yet I found myself wandering and wondering subconsciously if there were allusions or aphorisms that i was not privilege too. This is still an excellent read, don't over think it. ( )

This is the third work I've read from Kafka (after The Metamorphosis and The Hunger Artist). I enjoyed the other two more, but I think The Trial had some things stacked against it. First, it was uncompleted, or maybe just the revisions Kafka might have undertaken had been left undone. Second, I feel it was a much more intricate work than the prior two.

Parts of this novel seem to hint at religion. Especially the parable about the man and the guard at the door. Can it be that K is in purgatory? It seems like that answer would fit so nicely into the story. I haven't read the reviews of others on this yet, but I'm sure someone else has advanced that idea. If that's the case, you have my total endorsement!

In my copy of the book, I have a pro and con. The con is the preface - I have a big problem with prefaces going into plot details of the book. Chances are, the author provides those plot details better than the individual introducing - let the author do his or her job! I don't want a spoiler at the beginning of a book. Discuss plots and so forth at the end of the book to avoid creating a bias or stunting critical thinking. I usually read EVERYTHING in a book - fly leaf, about the author, even the paragraph about the typeset - but I skipped the preface when I started picking up on some spoiler info and I decided not to return to it because I was annoyed.

That being said, I did read the notes after the story ended and I read sections that had been deleted by Kafka or portions that had been taken out following his death because a chapter was unfinished. This was great to read - for the deleted materials, I saw a glimpse of an even better novel had he time to polish the final work. For the additional information about Kafka from his friend, it's always interesting to me to read about how close to oblivion particular great works were at one time or other. Kafka's works apparently were close - or in some cases, they were destroyed. That puts them up there with the near demise of Bram Stoker's Dracula and (ok maybe this is a stretch, but it's near and dear to my heart) Wilson Rawl's Where the Red Fern Grows. ( )