Prior to this book, I’m pretty sure the only Kafka I’ve ever read was The Metamorphosis, and that would’ve been back in high school, lo these many years ago. I remember very little of that one, beyond that it was weird, and any understanding I have of it may be as much based on the sort of cultural osmosis one gets about such a famous story as on any actual memories of the text.

I hadn’t realized when we picked it to read that The Trial was an unfinished novel — if you’re not familiar, it was assembled posthumously from chapters and fragments that Kafka had written, but not edited or ordered, leading to some inconsistencies and unclear narrative arcs. There have been a couple of differing editions; the one I read is a more recent re-assembling, which includes some of the fragments added as supplements of a sort at the end, instead of interspersed into the narrative, and reorders a couple of the chapters. I didn’t really know what to expect? I know, of course, that Kafka was a bit of a tortured genius, and that he specializes in existential horror, but I don’t really tend to read that sort of thing much, so I didn’t know how I would respond.

Dear reader, I hated it.

I hated it in the way that you hate something that you know is objectively very good, and which you also are just not enjoying on any level at all. I’ve run into this before, though thankfully not often — Requiem For A Dream, which is an incredible movie that I never ever want to see again; a lot of modern instrumental jazz; at least one of the previous “classics” I’ve read (Heart of Darkness). The Trial’s story is well-written, the plot expertly set, the prose beautifully translated (the translator’s note was the highlight of the book for me, and I am not joking even a little bit), and also the whole thing was a completely miserable slog from the very first page.

For those unfamiliar with the story, it follows a man — a youngish banker — Josef K., who wakes up one morning to the notice that he is to stand trial. For what, he doesn’t know, nor are we ever told; the narrative follows him through a year or so of gradually spiraling attempts to gain information about and make changes to his case, ending with his inevitable execution, to which he is vaguely resigned even as he is in the process of being stabbed in a quarry. The whole thing has the feeling of a bad dream, but not one of the intense, scary ones — instead, one of the long, drawn-out, stressful but surreal ones where you can’t get where you’re going, and every time you try to do something, you’re prevented or delayed. He goes to the court, which is in the attic of a slum, and is too hot, and there are holes in the floor, and where he is continually searching from room to room for information about his case; he gets a lawyer, an old man who is bed-ridden, and he has an affair with the lawyer’s housemaid, who is also having affairs with all of the lawyer’s clients, one of whom lives in a cupboard in the kitchen, so desperate is he to pursue his case; he visits a painter, who paints portraits of the judges in the court, and who is continuously hassled by children of the court who peer through the cracks in his door; etc etc. It’s all presented to Josef (and to us) as completely reasonable in spite of it being absolutely not, which is, of course, the point.

I won’t pretend to be able to explain the layers of allegory and metaphor, but it’s basically a critique/send-up of the way society is made up of layered and endless social and behavioral hoops, none of which have any meaning, but which can still ultimately kill us. Which, fair enough. I definitely understood the story emotionally, and in fact the ways in which it was viscerally familiar were part of what made reading it so miserable. I do not actually need, in this year of our fuck-up 2025, to slog through hundred-year-old existential angst — I have plenty of my own, thanks.

If you enjoy avoiding your own sense of abstract intellectual dread by experiencing others’, this is the book for you! If, however, you are looking for escapism, this ain’t it.

That said, the translator’s note was very good. 10/10 to the translator and the translator only. Well done, sir.