Josef K.’s trail started on the morning of his 30th birthday, when two officials came to arrest him. The trail ended on the eve of his 31st birthday, when two officials came to take him away for execution. In between, a mind boggling and incomprehensible trail—or process, if you will—takes place.
It’s a shadowy business, this trail. The crime that is committed is never revealed, the legal organization is a bureaucratic hierarchical system that defies belief, and K. isn’t exactly helping himself either. He slowly works his way to his own destruction.
I’ll freely admit that most of Kafka’s most famous work went straight over my head. But it’s not as if you had not figured that out by now.
- Book read
- Franz Kafka — Het proces (Der Prozess, translated from the German by Ruth Wolf)
- First line
- Iemand moest Josef K. belasterd hebben, want zonder dat hij iets kwaads had gedaan, werd hij op een morgen gearresteerd.