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The Trial

Penguin Classics

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The Trial

Written by: Franz Kafka, Idris Parry
Narrated by: Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

This Penguin Classic is performed by Kobna Holdbrook-Smith, winner of the 2019 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical.

A terrifying psychological trip into the life of one Joseph K., an ordinary man who wakes up one day to find himself accused of a crime he did not commit, a crime whose nature is never revealed to him. Once arrested, he is released, but must report to court on a regular basis - an event that proves maddening, as nothing is ever resolved. As he grows more uncertain of his fate, his personal life - including work at a bank and his relations with his landlady and a young woman who lives next door - becomes increasingly unpredictable. As K. tries to gain control, he succeeds only in accelerating his own excruciating downward spiral.

Public Domain (P)2019 Penguin Audio Classics Psychological Thriller & Suspense Fiction Exciting
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Another wonderful example of how an amazing narrator can make a great book come to life. Kobna Holbrook-Smith delivers another excellent performance. He is one of the best on Audible and should be given every award known to man. I highly recommend this version and if you enjoy it you should also get his reading of Nicholas Nickleby it is truly top notch.

Brilliant

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Same tone as The Castle or The Metamorphosis. Something is happening that is unreal and you have to translate it as an exaggeration of how we judge others, or even as a take on the infuriating redundance of bureaucracy. It is life with heightened anxiety, comical societal moral importance and brutal, deathly consequences for mere existence. If there ever was a tortured soul, I believe Kafka would be a prime example. Although I do relate with the viewpoint of his fiction that humans are quite ridiculous at times. Well, most times. Probably always.

I have to admit I faded out a bit in the middle. A lot of hard to follow dialogue because of the nature of the story. Conversations and interactions that don't really make sense so you cannot imagine it happening, if that makes sense. The Castle was like this x10 - like a dream with missing parts.

Typical Kafka

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I like this existential analysis.
"...The Trial, the work’s opening sentence is the most famous quotation in the whole book: ‘Someone must have been telling lies about Josef K., for without having done anything wrong, he was arrested one morning.’ But what follows is not a nightmare tale of being locked up in a cell or put on ‘trial’ in the usual sense, with a jury and a courtroom and a dock. Instead, the ‘trial’ is the trial of day-to-day living and the sense of ordinary guilt which stalks many of us in our waking (and even, sometimes, sleeping) lives."

Kafka and Existentialism

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Although the story is great, the readers voice creates almost a lack of engagement and tone variation. Maybes it’s just the accent though.

Poor voice for storytelling

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