Le Procès (French language, 1965, Librairie générale française)
432 pages
French language
Published Jan. 14, 1965 by Librairie générale française.
Byzantine and claustrophobic novel of a man arrested by the secret police and charged with an unspecified crime. Unable to defend himself and disorientated by the legal process at work around him the man soon becomes apathetic and acquiescent, accepting his eventual sentence as inevitable.
This novel was a joy to read. This labyrinth of relativising statements which grind down each others content until nothing is actually said is a timeless comment on bureaucracy and capitalist alienation in general.
That was disappointing. Too dense, too random and K is such an annoyingly obnoxious character that, by the second chapter, I was wishing they'd just lock him up and throw away the key.
The story can be read as a warning against the banal bureaucracy ot totalitarianism, but these themes have been much better handled by subsequent writers.
