Caution: Spoilers ahead

Summary

The core story of the book is about a person who has to go through a trial for an unknown reason. However, everything around his trial, and in fact the entire judicial system is absurdly compartmentalised, to the level where no-one has any idea about the goals of the system. Most people are just “doing their job” and blindly accept their position in that system, lest they end up getting crushed by it.

On sexism

The book is definitely hornier than I expected, as well as pretty sexist in its portrayal of women. Most of the protagonists interactions with women are either borderline or clearly pornographic, even if the author largely skips details. Dunno if on purpose, but the book certainly doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

On violence

An interesting note on violence: What happens to the protagonist is incredibly violent and traumatic, yet at no point is there direct physical, or even verbal violence. It’s all systemic. In fact, the protagonist is sometimes verbally abusive and once physically attacks someone, ye, yet is never reciprocated. All of the violence he receives is systemic. The characters he interacts with, are, if anything, awfully polite most of the time. Even his execution at the end feels consentual and polite to the point where the protagonist almost apologizes to his executors for the mess, ashamed of himself.

The type of violence, reminded me a discussion I’ve had with a loved one. She argued that physical violence in response to any other type of violence is almost always an “escalation”, as you cross over from the verbal to the physical domain. I disagreed with that, because I believe that types of violence, such as for example mental (e.g bullying) can be incredibly harmful, and much more insidious than physical violence. One of the counter-examples that I had to this, was the Israeli settles/squatters in Palestinian homes, which had made some news cycles around that time. These folks would enter Palestinian homes when the owners were away, then prevent the rightful owners from reeentering. The police would support them and turn a blind eye. Eventually, the Palestinian owners would try to force their way into their own homes, and they would be the ones arrested for “initiating” the physical violence.

See also: Procedural