A review by jeffthink
The Trial by Franz Kafka

2.0

This is a tough one to rate for me.

The storyline is brilliant - "what happens if you're arrested, but have no idea why and no one will tell you?" - and it's all too important of a topic in this "post-truth" era that we live in, especially one that features an alarming growth in despotic tendencies. Beyond that, there were certain passages that I genuinely enjoyed and found clever....but...

I really didn't enjoy the act of reading this as a whole. The scenes lurch from one to another, I often felt bored with some of the more inane dialogues, and overall I just felt like it could have been put together much better (to be clear, I'm not saying *I* am able to do so :) ). I get that Kafka's work is weird by nature, but I really did enjoy his book, The Metamorphosis, which is in a not dissimilar style.
I wonder if part of it is the translation I chose because there were several glaring typos.

Either way, I'm glad I read it, but sadly, can't happily recommend to others.