The Trial
by Franz Kafka · first published 1925
28% recommend69% neutral3% critical
Why HN recommends it
Nightmarish, surreal story of a man caught in an opaque legal machine; cited as the defining picture of bureaucratic helplessness, and a common first Kafka novel, with gripping, tragicomic scenes.
Common criticism: Some find it unfinished and in need of editing; they prefer his short stories
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
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Engineers need to read The Trial by Franz Kafka. I don't think people fear soulless beurocracy without any possible resolution enough.
on “The Machine Fired Me” ↗...or, read The Trial by Franz Kafka for a more apt summary
on “No-fly list ruling in Portland comes close to declaring it unconstitutional” ↗Please do yourself a favour and read "The Trial" by Franz Kafka.
on “Amazon Froze My Account and I Still Don’t Know Why” ↗The Trial by Franz Kafka!!!
on “Ask HN: What book changed your life?” ↗Really hard to read Kafka, frankly, but I love the major stories of his ("The Trial", "Metamorphosis", etc) and his many short stories so much that I've been trying to learn German (and French, though not necessarily at the same time) over the last year and a half. What I've learned…
on “Kafka: The Rescue Will Begin in Its Own Time” ↗How about some real books? - Narziss & Goldmund, by Herman Hesse - One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Garcia Marques - Crime and Punishment, by Dostoievsky - The Trial, by Kafka - L'étranger, by Albert Camus If you want to build your character, read the real stuff: fiction.
on “5 Great Books to Build Your Character” ↗Everyone should read Franz Kafka's The Trial. This story and The Trial depict the helplessness anyone can feel with our legal system, or any big bureaucracy.
on “How to Destroy Someone's Life or They called me a child pornographer” ↗> people want to close down the homeless shelter. You need to study some Kafka "The Trial" to understand how extreme bureaucracy functions. There's no subversive logic to the irrationality of most of these institutions. It's mostly just apathetic failure.
on “Massachusetts man uses 3-D printer to make prosthetic hand for his son” ↗Honest questions: are you an avid reader? What kind of writers do you prefer that usually fall in the Kafka-catergory. The Trial was my first Kafka and it bound me from the beginning. The scenes where he is picked up they were gripping and intense and tragi-comic at the same time. Interesting that it doesn't work for everyone.…
on “How to read Kafka: part I” ↗This reminds be so much of the novel The Trial by Kafka. The sinister feeling of a machine beyond anyone's control or comprehension was a commentary on authoritarianism and bureaucracy but it fits just as well, if not better to our age of computers…
on “Faults in Post Office accounting system led to workers being convicted of theft” ↗Read Kafka's The Trial [1], nice description of how it feels to be a person living in such system. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial
on “Tell HN: I was permanently banned from eBay in one hour” ↗I read The Trial a few years ago and found it a true masterpiece. I can understand that everyone doesn't share my opinion, but for me Kafka's stories hit too close to home. Many of us have been socially conditioned to…
on “How to read Kafka: part I” ↗Anybody who parrots ‘nothing to hide’ or anything similar needs to read The Trial. If we’re heading towards a dystopia, I don’t think it will be Orwell’s, I think it will be Kafka’s.
on “Coming Soon to a Police Station Near You: The DNA ‘Magic Box’” ↗…they please, and place the burden of proof onto the accused. A real life example would be the no fly list. How do you get on it? How do you get off it? The best example in fiction would be Kafka’s The Trial, imo.
on “Coming Soon to a Police Station Near You: The DNA ‘Magic Box’” ↗> Kafka's "The Process" This is also known as "The Trial"[0]. Just a fantastic, brutal work. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Trial
on ““I monitor my staff with software that takes screenshots”” ↗