Kafka's The Trial

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 27 November 2014

⏱️ 44 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel of power and alienation 'The Trial', in which readers follow the protagonist Joseph K into a bizarre, nightmarish world in which he stands accused of an unknown crime; courts of interrogation convene in obscure tenement buildings; and there seems to be no escape from a crushing, oppressive bureaucracy.

Kafka was a German-speaking Jew who lived in the Czech city of Prague, during the turbulent years which followed the First World War. He spent his days working as a lawyer for an insurance company, but by night he wrote stories and novels considered some of the high points of twentieth century literature. His explorations of power and alienation have chimed with existentialists, Marxists, psychoanalysts, postmodernists - and Radio 4 listeners, who suggested this as our topic for listener week on In Our Time.

GUESTS

Elizabeth Boa, Professor Emerita of German at the University of Nottingham Steve Connor, Grace 2 Professor of English at the University of Cambridge Ritchie Robertson, Taylor Professor of the German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford

Producer: Luke Mulhall.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.
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0:47.0	Hello, quote, somebody must have been telling lies about Joseph Kaye for one morning
0:51.8	without having done anything wrong he was arrested.
0:55.4	So begins the trial, the celebrated novel by Franz Kafka.
0:59.6	The readers drawn into a bizarre nightmarish world in which nobody will tell Joseph Kay the charges
1:04.7	against him. Courts of interrogation convene in obscure corners of tenement buildings. Sex and
1:10.6	sadistic punishment seems arbitrary and there seems to be no escape from a crushing bureaucracy.
1:16.8	Kefka was a German-speaking Jew who lived in the Czech city of Prague across the end of the 19th beginning of the 20th century. He spent days working
1:25.2	as a lawyer for an insurance company but by night he wrote stories and novels
1:28.8	considered now some of the high points of 20th century literature, although few were published in his own lifetime.
1:36.4	His explorations of power and alienation have chined with existentialists, Marxists,
1:41.0	psychoanalysis, postmodernists and Radio 4 listeners who suggested this as our topic
1:46.5	for listener week in our time. So thank you to Roy Bailey and Lauren Hall, the two of you who made this suggestion.
1:53.3	With me to discuss Kafka and the trial
	...

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