| The Trial Contributor(s): Kafka, Franz (Author), Mitchell, Breon (Translator), Howard, Geoffrey (Read by) |
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ISBN: 0786195657 ISBN-13: 9780786195657 Publisher: Blackstone Audiobooks OUR PRICE: $22.46 Product Type: MP3 CD - Other Formats Published: September 2008 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Fiction | Classics - Fiction | Literary - Fiction | Alternative History |
| Dewey: FIC |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: 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. |
Contributor Bio(s): Mitchell, Breon: - Breon Mitchell is a professor of Germanic studies and comparative literature and the director of the Lilly Library at Indiana University. He was awarded the Helen and Kurt Wolff Prize for his translation of Uwe Timm's Morenga in 2004. Kafka, Franz: -Franz Kafka (1883-1924), one of the major fiction writers of the twentieth century, was born to a middle-class German-speaking Jewish family in Prague. His unique body of writing, much of which is incomplete and was mainly published posthumously, is considered by some people to be among the most influential in Western literature, inspiring such writers as Albert Camus, Rex Warner, and Samuel Beckett. Howard, Geoffrey: -Ralph Cosham (1936-2014), a.k.a. Geoffrey Howard, was a British journalist who changed careers to become a narrator and screen and stage actor. He performed in more than one hundred professional theatrical roles, and several of his narrations were named "Audio Best of the Year" by Publishers Weekly. In 2013 he won the coveted Audie Award for his narration of Louise Penny's The Beautiful Mystery. |