Josef K. is an employee at a bank, an Everyman without any particular qualities or ambitions. His inconsequence makes doubly strange his "arrest" by an officer of the court, made with no formal charges or explanation. Disoriented and consumed with guilt for a "crime" he does not understand, Josef K. must justify his life to a "court" with which he cannot communicate. The defendant can only ask questions, but receives no answers to clarify the surreal world in which he is compelled to wander.
Through the court’s relentless bureaucratic proceedings and absurd juxtapositions of different hypotheses of cause and effect, the whole rational structure of the world is undermined. The trial of Josef K. becomes a chilling existential metaphor for life itself, where every sentence is a sentence of death.
A short note to narrator Geoffrey Howard: Breathe. Take one deep breath. Allow readers a chance to hear a pause so they can press the stop button and not miss anything. End of note. Actually, Howard has a great voice for this modern classic's new translation. (Don't fast-forward past his reading of the translator's note. It explains a lot.) Howard's British accent and deep monotone set the proper dark tone for the book. He stays away from character voices, and that works too because his inflections carry the story's emotions along. Indeed, Howard acts as our intellectual guide by emphasizing key passages and marking them as worthy of interpretation and discussion. If only he would take a breath once in a while. R.I.G. (c) AudioFile, Portland, Maine
AudioFile...
"Howard's British accent and deep monotone set the proper dark tone for the book...Howard acts as our intellectual guide by emphasizing key passages and marking them as worthy of interpretation and discussion."
Franz Kafka (1883–1924) was born in Prague, the son of a well-to-do merchant. After earning his law degree in 1906, he worked most of his adult life at the Workers’ Accident Insurance Company for the Kingdom of Bohemia in Prague from 1907 to 1923. Only a small portion of his writings were published during his lifetime, as Kafka had misgivings about his work; these were his short stories, including "The Stoker" (1913), "Meditation" (1913), and "The Metamorphosis" (1915).
