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Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Selected Writings, Volume 2, Fictions

Translated by Joel Agee
Edited and with an Introduction by Theodore Ziolkowski

These translations of Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s fiction introduce the writer to a new generation of readers.

The Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–90) was one of the most important literary figures of the second half of the twentieth century. During the years of the cold war, arguably only Beckett, Camus, Sartre, and Brecht rivaled him as a presence in European letters. Yet outside Europe, this prolific author is primarily known for only one work, The Visit

This second volume of Selected Writings reveals a writer who may stand as Kafka’s greatest heir. Dürrenmatt’s novellas and short stories are searing, tragicomic explorations of the ironies of justice and the corruptibility of institutions. The most well-known work included here is The Pledge, a requiem to the detective story that was made into a film starring Jack Nicholson. The evocative novellas The Assignment  tells the story of a woman filmmaker investigating a mysterious murder in an unnamed Arab country; it has been hailed by Sven Birkerts as “a parable of hell for an age consumed by images.” The novella Traps, meanwhile, is a chilling comic novella about a traveling salesman who agrees to play the role of the defendant in a mock trial among dinner companions—and then pays the ultimate penalty.

Dürrenmatt has long been considered a great writer, but one unfairly neglected in the modern world of letters. With these elegantly conceived and expertly translated volumes, a new generation of readers will rediscover his greatest works.

See our Friedrich Dürrenmatt website.


408 pages | 6 x 9 | © 2006

Fiction

Literature and Literary Criticism: Germanic Languages

Table of Contents

Introduction by Theodore Ziolkowski

The Sausage
The Old Man
The Theater Director
The Dog
The Tunnel
The Pledge  - Requiem for the Detective Novel
Greek Man Seeks Greek Wife - A Prose Comedy
Traps - A Still Possible Story
The Coup
Smithy
The Dying of the Pythia
The Minotaur - A Ballad
The Assignment; or, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers - A Novella in Twenty-four Sentences

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