Two Kafkas, two worlds

Sue Arnold on The Trial | Kafka on the Shore | Maupassant Magic

The Trial, by Franz Kafka, translated by David Whiting, read by Rupert Degas (8½hrs unabridged, Naxos, £27.99)

Innocent man arrested, charged, detained, interrogated and ultimately sentenced for unspecified crimes against the state - the theme of Kafka's sinister classic about the powerlessness of the individual is as relevant now, more so possibly, as it was when he wrote it nearly 100 years ago. When the next film of The Trial comes out (and there's bound to be one hoping to outshine the Orson Welles and Harold Pinter versions), it will probably be called The Rendition of Joseph K. "Someone must have been spreading stories about Joseph K," goes the first sentence, "because, one morning, although he had done nothing wrong, he was arrested." This curious mixture of low-key and explosive is Kafka's trademark. Remember "Metamorphosis", where the young man wakes up to discover, more to his annoyance than anything else, that he has turned into a beetle? Thirty-one-year-old Joseph K seems more concerned that his arrest will make him late for work - to start with, at least. But, as the plot thickens to the same obfuscating density as the fog in Bleak House, and more and more demands are made on him to appear before mysterious officials who might have wandered in from Nineteen Eighty-Four or Alice in Wonderland, the tension and terror mount. Surreal, banal, sexy, funny, terrifying - it's all of these and more, and the end, inevitably, is ghastly. This new translation by David Whiting, commissioned exclusively for audio, aims to make the text more immediately intelligible to the listener, which basically means cutting out some of the repetition and substituting proper names for pronouns so that you know who is talking. The unrelenting nightmare terror remains intact, reinforced by Rupert Degas's extraordinary reading, best described as controlled teetering on insane. A truly stunning performance.

Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami, translated by Philip Gabriel, read by Sean Barrett, Oliver Le Sueur and others (19½hrs unabridged, Naxos, £49)

Kafka Tamura, a precocious 15-year-old from Tokyo with oedipal tendencies, runs away from home, meets a transsexual librarian on Shikoku, Japan's smallest island, reads a lot of books, sleeps with two women (his sister? His mother?), finds his true self in a magical forest. Meanwhile, sixtysomething, brain-damaged Nakata murders a man who kills cats to make flutes from their souls, legs it to the same Shikoku library and finds his true self in a motel room. I think. Murakami isn't good with loose ends but he is brilliant with talking cats, mixed-up adolescents, quirky relationships and stories requiring off-the-wall imagination. I wouldn't have lasted the course without Sean Barrett, whose Nakata will wring your heart. You either love or loathe Japan's favourite novelist. I'm still undecided.

Maupassant Magic, by Guy de Maupassant, read by Peter Joyce (6½hrs unabridged, Assembled Stories, £18.45)

My first - but not I hope my last - acquaintance with this eclectic publisher of classic stories packaged, presented and read in an unashamedly old-fashioned three Rs way, ie Royal Academy covers, romantic music, rounded vowels. De Maupassant wrote three novels and more than 300 stories. These 10 represent his range rather than his genius, but if, like the desert island castaway, I could take only one, it would be "Boule de Suif" (Fat Ball), the best short story ever written in any language. Ten refugees from Rouen are fleeing the Prussian occupation of France in 1870 - six self-styled toffs, two nuns, a communist and a patriotic putain. Greed, hypocrisy, pride - De Maupassant's take on human frailty is merciless. And his spare descriptions of the snow-covered Normandy landscape and its occupants, including a certain unyielding young Prussian officer, are simply dazzling. This is magic for sure.