The Trial

I'd been intending to read Franz Kafka's works for a long time, but never thought I had the time. Recently downloading a free audiobook trial came as a welcome surprise; unlike for Josef! I read The Metamorphosis first, and loved it, moving quickly to The Trial. Josef's story starts, the morning of his 30th birthday; he undergoes a whirlwind of experiences, emotions, procedures and we, the reader, observ5e these absurdities, and also Josef's personal growth, alongside the interactions with allies, survivors and wielders of power, as he struggles to make sense of it all... As an aside, a peculiar personal parallel that I share with Josef, is that in 2022, on my 33rd birthday, I went for an MRI on my head, to gain understanding of why I had started experiencing seizures, within the prior months. I was immediately requested to return ASAP, and within 10 days, I discovered that there was a tumour growing on my brain. From this perspective, I can definitely empathise.

Highly disturbing dystopian parody of law, combined with classic Kafka psychological crisis. Terrifyingly realistic.