Quote Originally Posted by mal4mac View Post
I read Kafka's main novels when I was about 17, on the science track, and not very well read. I thought they were wonderful. So I don't think you need to read a bookcase full of serious literature. Maybe your mind just needs to work in certain ways? Maybe i was well primed by reading "complex" science fiction - Ballard, Orwell, Huxley...? You might want to try these authors and then come back to Kafka. Certainly don't give up on literature, try reading the best (or most approachable!) works of several writers until someone clicks.
I think I must have been about 14 when I read The Trial- at points I thought I 'got' it but then other times...totally stumped.
However, The Metamorphosis is pretty easy to understand and if you read Kafka's short stories, you start to get a sense of what his strange mind is like.