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“Franz Kafka’s Trial” – book review


What can I say about the man “K” who is on trial for a crime who knows nothing about? He is on arrest, but can go on with his everyday routine just as well as he used to do prior to that. The judge who summons “K” is clueless, officers who arrest “K” are clue less, and everyone seems to be part of a giant mechanism of portentous network that looms on to people and casts giant shadows, obfuscates the lay man from the authority behind the clouds.

The whole novel is reminiscent of “Who are you?” track by “The Who”. The courtroom is filled with people who nonchalantly applaud “K”; the judge, apparently pretends to listen, but is thumbing down the pages of a notebook that has nude pictures of voluptuous females. K’s innocuous remarks (or so he thought at the time) result in two officers whipped officially for a good whole day; his neighbour, a lady who works in the theatre is cross with him, for he accosted her the other night with nonsensical claims of his being put on trial; his landlady who seems to be deeply affected by the whole episode cries her heart out, but blurts a thing or two about the theatre lady’s affairs; K’s uncle, a man from the country side, who concerns himself with the case, reprimands K for the trial, censures his secretive affairs, makes it clear to him that the whole family is taking it badly.

But, nobody knows, K himself doesn’t know what he is being arrested for, what is the trial for? His inquisitiveness takes him to the courtroom- on a particular day when there are no hearings. The lady, whose house is the court room, approaches K with an offer of eloping with him. The office in the attic room of the apartment, the dusty room that suffocates everyone with air that one cannot inhale for its heaviness; the men inside, waiting in a long queue to submit their applications for a hearing; the student at the court room who carries the lady (literally, lifts her up in his arms) and takes the stairs to the attic before K to meet the Judge. The husband, poor fellow, is complaining to K about the judge and student misusing his hospitality, his wife….

“The Observer” sums the novel in one word-Enigmatic.


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