It is interesting to view philosophy through a woman's perspective. Indeed there lived an intellectual woman, praised for her psychological contributions to society, who still managed to devote a significant amount to writing about her personal experiences of friendship and reflection. She had a passionate love affair with poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and significant friendships with Nietzsche and Freud. Nietzsche once said that she is "by far the smartest person I ever knew." Indeed, such a woman once existed - her named was Lou Salome. Indeed the story is about Lou's life, yet intern the reader is introduced to Ree, Nietzsche, Rilke, and Freud. Reading "Looking Back" is quite a different experience than reading Nietzsche, or a nook of Rilke poems. It reminds us that these masters were human beings; they had feelings! Lou was present throughout a period of depression in both Nietzsche and Rilke. She wrote when they were mentally paralyzed. What strategies must a woman use to flirt with the some of the greatest minds of her time? Overall, how does she manage to have a successful career as well as be the subject of her lovers' poetry? Lou Salome's "Looking Back" answers some of these questions, and breaks the barrier between the words 'philosopher' and 'friend'.

The overwhelming feeling you get when reading this book is the desperate struggle for short term survival. The background is a German city (possibly Cologne) in the first
Days and weeks after the capitulation of the German army in 1945. Every conversation is focused on bread - not even full meals, just slices of bread. The city is bleak and devastated, the characters are transient figures struggling, dazed and nauseous, into whatever the future may hold. Their pasts are briefly mentioned, but the conditions in which they find themselves allow for almost total dislocation from their past lives.

The language of the book is austere, the characters are not clearly distinguishable, the colours mentioned - apart from grey destruction - are greenish and yellowish hazes. These tune in with the bilious, nausea of the characters as they continuously search for food and shelter. Throughout the story each character is portrayed as exhausted, struggling, nauseous.

The novels main character has deserted the German Army in the final days of the war, and under a certain sentence of death for desertion, has assumed numerous identities as he flees. He has, however, promised a dead comrade that he will return a coat to his comrade's widow. A will is discovered in the lining of the coat and this yields an subplot of intrigue and corruption. The main character meanwhile meets and briefly lives with a dazed, tragic woman who has been psychologically damaged by the war.

The novel's main impression is the exhaustion of emotion, the breakdown of society brings about a breakdown of morality and order. Stealing and dishonesty of all kinds are part of daily life, as are small gestures of generosity. In the broken cityscape, there is neither trust nor complete anarchy, just a meandering from one slice of bread to the next. Towards the end of the book , the main character has established a certain routine which allows him to steal coal from trains, which gives him some power to barter.

Boll's austere tale, gives us a view of the amoral aftermath of a societal dislocation. While neither describing nor moralizing, he shows us a set of normal characters and the lives they adopt to survive in the much reduced circumstances.

I am not a book reviewer; nor do I know how to write a good review. But I cannot let it pass without wanting to share this book with anyone who is interested in reading about the human suffereing due to the ravages and results of war. This book describes so well the aftermath of war; the hopelessness; the futility. It is gaudy, despressing, poignant, shocking, realistic. The Silent Angel leaves you, at times, as you are reading, speechless. Sentences that are shocking; that end abruptly symbolising the crudeness of war;

I enjoy reading Heinrich Boll in part because he offers a perspective of WWII through the eyes of an every day German. Most German perspectives of WWII seem to be written by someone who wants you to know that they are one of the "good guys". In his books I have been given a glimpse of what it was like to be on the losing side. In "The Silent Angel" we get a glimpse of what it is like to return to a home that doesn't really exist any more. The vivid depictions in this novella are the works not only of one whose knows of what he speaks, but also of one gifted to tell the world. Boll is no apologist for Germany but he conveys the world as he experienced it. The destruction and the despair are overwhelming but there is hope in the relationship between the common sufferers. Many will read this book in a single sitting but the impressions will last long afterwards.

Not until 1982 had I formed a clear idea for the meaning of the term Òkafkaesque.Ó The revelation came when I found myself trapped in the middle of Prague, KafkaÕs hometown, on a crossroad that received one way lanes from every direction. It was real and surreal and frightening and comical, but nothing dreamy about it. I knew, if I tried to get myself out of this situation, there would inevitably be a very real cop just waiting to give me a very real ticket,. And he did. He was drunk and rather shabbily uniformed. For many years in my early teens, I had KafkaÕs ÔTrialÕ on my bedside table. If you want to learn German, this is the book for you. It comes in simple and straightforward language. Kafka was a great admirer of Flaubert and his maxim to tell extraordinary things in ordinary language. So whatever KafkaÕs translators may say, Kafka does not exactly pose a linguistic challenge. Still there are differences. The Muirs' translation, prior to MitchellÕs, is still a respectable piece of late Victorian imitation furniture. But Mitchell does improve, no doubt. However the actual order of the chapters in this unfinished novel is still open to questions -- MitchellÕs editors chose to be conservative. As it stands, the ÒTrialÓ is a great step forward from KafkaÕs first novel ÔAmerica!Õ which was written under the influence of Oliver Twist. It has many scenes of burning intensity and a sensual quality, Kafka himself never matched again. However the American backdrop is cut from cardboard and not very convincing. Kafka always had a problem to convey a sense of locality if it wasnÕt his hometown. Any reader of KafkaÕs ÒCastleÓ faces the same problem, the interiors come to life vividly enough, but the geography is curiously vague. The ÒTrialÕsÓ setting is Prague, and it shows. This is perhaps KafkaÕs most guilt-stricken story. From scene to scene the shadows thicken until Joseph K.Õs providential encounter in the mystical bleakness of the Cathedral. I refuse to speculate on the meaning in all of this, however I would advise against fetching too far for an interpretation. The language is straightforward but still loaded with little pointers and puns. For instance: the protagonist (Joseph K.) has a crush on a certain Miss ÔBŸrstner.Õ This name is derived from the verb ÒbŸrstenÓ Ð German for Òbrushing,Ó which in German is also a vulgar euphemism for sexual intercourse; and this is no coincidence. There is sex all over the place: the protagonist has an affair with his attorneyÕs maid, shabbily dressed judges simply carry away women into their chambers, during Joseph KÕs conversation with the painter, you hear the painterÕs models giggle in the background. Notice the running parallel between illicit sex and dingy justice. The Viennese critic Karl Kraus had published a series of essays under the title ÒThe Chinese Wall.Ó In it Kraus attacked AustriaÕs legal system and spoke up in defence of prostitutes. Kafka knew Kraus, he attended his public readings, and he might have picked up on a phrase Kraus liked to scream at his audience. It began with: ÒBecause justice is a whore ... ,Ó (which no doubt it is.) In KafkaÕs novel the courts convene in the strangest places, in attics and lofts, under the rafters of top floors, in sub-tenancies of housing projects. This strange judicial system never allows to approach the upper echelons, but the lower charges are beggarly and sly. The whole state seems to be afflicted by an underground conspiracy, and you never know whether your friendly janitor isnÕt one of them. If it were ancient Rome, you could say the slaves are judging their masters. Joseph K. himself is a somewhat aloof and haughty character, not un-typical for a senior manager. K. works for a bank and he is a sharp dresser and moves with ease in circles of attorneys, chief administrators and CEOs. Kafka lifted out of the text the key-parable, ÒBefore the LawÓ and published it separately in a collection of shorter pieces. It is difficult to put your finger exactly on the meaning of this famous parable, but it certainly gives the entire novel in a nutshell. In the era of Stalin and McCarthy and after the horrors of the death-camps it has became fashionable to read into KafkaÕs novel a brooding indictment against oppression and persecution. I am not so sure: itÕs a tough call, because he is never told the charges, yet something seems to be expected of Joseph K., a change of heart perhaps, or a sign of redeeming humility, but K. remains unchanged, his ordeal merely infuses an ever more deepening gloom. One of the great paradigms of modern literature.

Dense, atmospheric and truly haunting, Kafka's The Trial is quite possibly the greatest book ever written. The tale of one man's futile battle against bureaucracy, it is even more applicable to our meaningless, frustating modern existence than it probably was to turn of the century Prague. This new translation manages to capture Kafka's dark wit in a way that has never been done before - showing the author not only to be a true visionary, but an eccentric, funny human being as well. There is no doubt that it is complex and hard going, but the rewards that you may reap from perservering are more than worth the effort. And for those that fail to understand it, I suggest you take some time out for introspection - for this book may very well be the greatest comprehensive biography of our century.

Well, I've just finished reading The Trial for the sixth, maybe even eighth time, and as usual my brain is buzzing with all the unanswered questions and unspoken quandaries that this book embeds in the reader's mind.
An aside - this is the first time I have read this particular translation, having read the Muir's work before. Perhaps this translation is a bit livelier, and the chapters, or sequences, are grouped a bit differently, but the general experience of reading and digesting this book was much the same as with the Muir's version. One caution, if you are a first time reader do not read the introduction first. The author gives away much too much of the story and ending in the introduction.
Now, back to the book itself. As "they" say, the mark of a true classic is that you can reread the book several times and always find it fresh. This is most certainly the case with The Trial. I always struggle with the question of K.'s innocence. The reader is told, unequivocally, that the Law is attracted to guilt. Is this an illustration of the unreasoning, monolithic madness that

so often surrounds totalitarian states, or is Kafka tellling

the reader indirectly that K. is guilty? I think most readers,
especially me, want to like and identify with the central
protagonist of a novel, but on this particular rereading
I noticed that K. is really a pretty nasty character. He is
arrogant beyond belief, selfish, treats women and most everyone
else as objects, and is even potentially violent. He alienates
and insults people who have the desire and the means to help him
navigate the formalities and uncertainties of his arrest and
trial. Or, is he an essentially decent fellow who, beset with
unrelenting frustration and anger at being accused and arrested
for a crime he didn't commit, decompensates into irrational
actions? Don't expect easy answers from Kafka. He is not going
to wrap everything up in a pretty bow, fully resolved, so that
you can feel good. It's a damned disturbing, sometimes bizarre,
and ultimately amazing novel. What is noteworthy is how
deceptively simple the construction of the plotline is. First,
the novel is short. Second, there are no parallel or
simultaneous plotlines occurring. There is only one plotline,
that of K. as he is initially arrested and subsequently tries to
make sense of what the charges are and how to deal with them. K.
is in every scene. There's no ,"meanwhile, back at the
courthouse, Inspector Smith was...". So the story, if this novel
can be said to contain a "story", moves along quite quickly.
Kafka's prose style is crisp and unadorned, as you might expect
from someone educated in business and law in early 1900's
Prague.And it's a good thing that he writes so clearly, because
the story itself contains not only some astonishingly bizarre
scenes (the flogging in the closet springs to mind) but dizzying
explanations of the procedures and logic of the court, the Law,
the judges, and lawyers. Imagine a writer like Tom Robbins, or
Don Delillo, with their hallucinogenic segues and refusal to bow
to consistency and logic, trying to pull off the "Lawyer"
or "Painter" sequences. It would be a soggy mess. But Kafka with
his precision and austerity makes it breathtaking.
It's funny, when my friends see me reading Kafka the initial response is almost always surprise and some variation of "Yuck!"
Of course, they haven't read him, but everyone "knows" that he is weird and dark and disturbed plus the book is old and doesn't probably even have a happy ending. Oh well, their loss.
I really want to take a class on Kafka, ideally focussing on the Trial. It is puzzling and unsettling and I'd love to hear other's thoughts on the symbolism and meaning contained in the book. In fact, if you're a Kafka scholar, or just someone who likes and has given some thought to this book, email me with your thoughts.
I unhesitatingly recommend this novel. It is important. It is certainly important to me.

ng

Boell's ability to describe very different character's points of view is excellent. This is a very good book for anyone who is interested in German anti-war literature.

Like Graves, Sassoon and Owen in the First World War, Heinrich Böll brought a mix of apathy and disgust to his writings about World War II as well as a literary sensibility that condemned him to this genre. Böll, along with Günter Grass, author of The Tin Drum, and Arno Schmidt, is considered one of the most influential German writers of the postwar period.

The Mad Dog represents the third extraction from material left by Böll at his death in 1985 and contains nine previously unpublished stories and a novel fragment, all written between 1936 and 1950. I think they represent the best introduction to Böll available. They also anticipate his best work, the novels, Billiards at Half-Past Nine and The Clown. The Mad Dog will probably have the most appeal to readers who are already familiar with these great novels and who want to listen to the source of Böll's recurring themes.

Youth on Fire represents the earliest work contained in this book and is a poignantly clumsy parable of Heinrich, a sixteen year old boy of Wetherian turn of mind. When Heinrich meets a woman, however, his life takes a very different course. In a demi-parable uttered by one of the characters there is a flash of the mature Böll's bitter humor.

The Fugitive and Trapped in Paris, composed ten years later, are the antithesis of Youth on Fire. These two stories are of a desperate and solitary soldier, in the former, an escaped POW or a deserter and in the latter a German soldier cut off from his unit during secret battles. In these stories, the iconic and discursive idealism of Youth on Fire is replaced by the naturalistic German Expressionism that became Böll's signature in the years immediately following the war and which reached its peak in one of his most famous stories, Stranger, Bear Word to the Spartans We.

The Fugitive is very close to the model of Böll's postwar work and consists of a dramatic narrative of claustrophobia and fear that concludes abruptly and violently.

The Rendezvous contains one of Böll's recurring themes: the difficulty of love. Böll was a writer whose sense of the absurdity of Eros was as highly developed as was his sense of the absurdity of Thanatos. Although many of his stories, such as the beautiful My Pal With the Long Hair, celebrate the triumph of love, most of them seem to center on love's impossibilities instead. Centering on a turbulent and mysterious affair, The Rendezvous contains an implicit riddle, much like Hemingway's Hills Like White Elephants.

The Tribe of Esau is an unusual early experiment in the use of a female character's perspective and The Dead No Longer Obey, according to the translator's notes, reworks a passage from the draft of a play entitled As the Law Demanded. This story is yet another soldier parable with a characteristic poetic and rhetorical twist.

The Tale of Berkovo Bridge and the novel fragment, Paradise Lost stand out as the work of the mature Böll and neither is really heretofore unpublished material. The former contains the reflections of a German military engineer who rebuilds a Russian bridge to facilitate the retreat of 1943 and offers a piece of absurdity as an effective metaphor for the regimented chaos of war. The Tale of Berkovo Bridge anticipates Böll's greatest novel, Billiards at Half-Past Nine and also contains a manipulation of emblem that some of Böll's readers have found objectionably schematic.

The text of Paradise Lost was, in part, incorporated into Der Engel schwieg and Böll also published two extractions of it as Night of Love and The Gutter. As it is published in this collection, Paradise Lost is a returning-soldier story that dwells on yet another of Böll's recurring themes: the seemingly random and poignant stasis of solitary objects amid decay. Returning to the home of his lover after seven years' absence in the war, the narrator notices a section of a rain gutter hanging down just had it had prior to his leaving.

The most palpable current in all of Böll's writing, however, is sorrow. It is abundantly present in this collection and it seems to stand as an apposite elegy for the twentieth century. This collection is a wonderful introduction to the writings of one of this century's most talented German writers.

The Trial is definately the best book I have ever read, though I do love Kafka's other works as well. I keep coming back to The Trial, over and over again, it's a book you can read a thousand times, and never be sick of. Kafka brings you in to his world of confusion and angst, through this amazing story. The words make you feel the way the main character, Josef K. feels, and enables you to imagine yourself in his situation. The Trial makes you think about your own life, and what "innocence" really means. I strongly recommend this book to any literature lover, Kafka lover - or anyone really. This is a book written by one of the most important authors of our history, a must-read.

We should all know the story concerning one of the greatest novels ever written, about a man being awaken to find out he is under arrest for a crime he knows nothing about, and charged by an unknown person.
It's been debated as to what is really Kafka's novel all about. Some say, it's "hero"(?) Joseph K. represents the "every man". Who has been forced to live in a world, where's man's biggest sin is being himself. The character K. like Kafka himself feels they are an outsider in a world they cannot function in. Others still, see the book as merely a semi-autobiography as Kafka's own feelings of worthlessness. We all know Kafka even doubted his own talents as a writer. But, yet again, others think that "K." is not the "every man". That he is guilty of his "sins".
So, what does all of this prove? It simply goes to show you the impact Franz Kafka has left on the world. Here we have a book published in 1925 and still causes debate as to what exactly were Kafka's intentions. If, infact, he didn't have any intentions!
'The Trial', to me is a story of a man's loneliness. It's a story of man who probably is guilty of what he is charged with. And we slowly read about his desent into a world of paranoia. I've heard some people agrue that what happens to "K." is all merely a dream. None of it ever really happened, but, it was "K." himself who brought this punishment on himself. Sort of like how Kafka himself did by never marrying the girl he loved, by living in the shadows of his father, who he adored, and never having an self confidence. If what happens in 'The Trial' is a dream, you can bet "K." learned something.
There's something about Kafka that fasincates me. He is one of my favorite authors. I find Kafka himself to be just as interesting has the stories he wrote. People tend to forget or overlook something in Kafka's writing. He WAS funny. His novels all have moments that are truly inspired. One of my favorite chapters in this book deals with "The Painter". What happens has "K." trys to leave and the Painter stops him asking him if he wants to buy a painting had me laughing.
For those of you who have never read this book, I do completely recommend it. You will find the book to be fascinating. Kafka was a master of thinking up these surreal stories. You may be bothered by the book's conclusion. Not that you'll mind the final act against "K." but, you'll be bothered by the way it happens. You would have expected more of a set-up. I know I did. Others who read the book may feel the book is incomplete. And that may lead them to dislike it. You are right in your judgement that the book is incomplete, but, remember, Kafka never wanted any of his books published. There's actually a chapter in here that was never finished. And, even though it is incomplete that didn't stop me from truly enjoying this masterpiece. If you have never read anything by Kafka, this is a fine place to start. I hope everyone finds 'The Trial' to be as enjoyable as I did.
Bottom-line: One of the great works by Kafka. It touches on themes that were ahead of their time. Themes that are still around us today. An excellent example of the paranoid mind. Everyone should read this!

If you are into existencialism or if you are worried about the meaning of your subjective life and the absurdity of the workings of modern society, this is a book you must read. Or maybe, if you read this though provoking masterpiece, you will start to think seriously about these issues and other aspects of the individual, and its daily relationship with society, bureaucracy and power.
This book was published poshumously in 1925 (Kafka died in 1924), and is considered by many philosophers and critics the best that he wrote.
The description of solitude and of the alienation of the modern human being is at the core of all Kafka's opus. We could consider that K. anticipated some recurrent themes of the existencialists. His detailed and realistic description of the human individual existence reveals its absurdity and irreality. From a metaphysical perspective, the absurd is based on the absence of God and the impossibility to understand anything that goes beyond rationality. From the social standpoint, it stems from the suffocating or controlling character of modern society. Struck by these complexities, the individual can only seek refuge in his small personal reality, renouncing reassuring answers and certainties.

Unlike the editorial review from Kirkus, I found humor this book and did not consider it "intellectual". It does require effort to see the relationships between the 21 semi-independent chapters which constitute the narrative. The story can be summarized very simply: boy born mishappen wins heart of grandfather; father returns from war shell-shocked; father dies; years later mother dies; 30 year old boy move in with distant relative; questions of intelligence, language and identity arise; story ends with suggestion boy is perhaps also author.

Along with way the story is told with variable success and with items of symbolic meanings reappearing with limited success at providing continuity. An example of discontinuity: we leave a young child who speaks a private language with his grandfather. We jump to a thirty year old who needs a guardian and an assisted care living arrangement ...Whose guardian successfully gets him a job in a movie theater. While many of the juxtapositions around Jakob are specially intended to force the reader to rethink Jakob's identity, this particular jump feels as if the author himself does not understand the transition.

An occasional chapter, such as the story of the young glazier, set up symbols - in this case mirrors - that add little to the scenes in which mirrors become crucial elements of the story. In a story as tightly written with regards to ambigious identity, this struck me as a flaw.

So why four stars? The book succeeds at simultaneously presenting alternative views of who Jakob is and what he is. In the private language he first learned and in the film script without words, the book explores language in an interesting way. In the cumplusive analysis of train schedules, mirrors, motionlessness etc., the book explores the boundary of experienced world and "real world out there".

Definately not a perfect novel, but a good first novel worth your time.

Comic stories about gods walking among present day mortals are nothing new. The classic is Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," but there are several exemplary twentieth century works, including my personal favorite, Thorne Smith's The Night Life of the Gods, and some of Tom Holt's recent fantasies. And it is easy to understand why the combination is popular--the author gets to comment on the foibles of mortality from an omniscient viewpoint without having to worry about going through any middleman.

The god of the title is Hermes (or Mercury if you prefer Romanization), who has been chained to a rock in the Aegean Sea by Zeus because of his disrespect. Zeus, being somewhat less intelligent than powerful, promptly forgets about him for a few thousand years. The novel opens with him obtaining his freedom by natural processes (a volcano) and being observed by Helga, a passenger on a passing cruise ship.

Great opening, but for some reason it never seems to rise above it, and constantly disappoints. Maybe it is a factor of the translation that the story seems to shift around. I could never tell if Helga was aware of Hermes' divinity or if she was an immortal herself. Some of the social commentary comes through, but never enough to break through the plot confusion.

The Greek god Hermes suddenly is released from his 2000 year imprisonment in a volcano. Only a seemingly innocent tourist from East germany sees his escape. However, the tourist, Helga, is actually Helle, the girl who fell from the Golden Ram into the Hellespont.

Hermes is now in the 20th Century and has a larger world to cover than that of ancient Greece. He also needs to discover why Hephaestus released him. In seemingly directionless wandering throughout Europe (but not to Athens which is forbidden to him), and by incredible means, Hermes discovers that Hephaestus has increased his knowledge of manufacturing and technology to the point that he now is the most powerful god.

It takes time and some amazing coincidences for Hermes to discover what Hephaestus's plan for the world is. During his travels, Hermes meets many ancient gods and spirits who still exist but are almost impotent because man barely remembers them. Hephaestus has set up a new but powerless god on the cross to distract people from the true source of power.

Nadolny has given brief reminders of who some of the gods were and how they changed over time. The Hermes of the ancient Greeks is certainly a god of impertinence, though he did have some serious responsibilities layered onto him as the myths changed. In Nadolny's book, Hermes is somewhat irreverent, but more he acts like a cynical secret agent who feels he is the only one who can save the world from a mad megalomaniac.

There are entertaining episodes, and some very thin discussion of the role of gods in human life. But, all in all, the plot is contrived and implausible. Whenever there is an opening to develop a character or situation or to investigate a profound question, Nadolny backs away from it.

As for German readers it is the best told truth of the current situation I have read so far. Who loves greek mythology should have a light and amusing read, however do not expect it to be dull or low levelled! You will learn a lot about the German mentality. Even though the Germans are not always described as the most friendly entities, you'll like them nevertheless