Selected Writings-3 Volumes: Plays, Fictions, Essays by Friedrich Durrenmatt. Chicago. 2006. University Of Chicago Press. Translated From The German By Joel Agee. Volume 1 Edited & With An Introduction By Kenneth J. Northcott. Volume 2 Edited & With An Introduction By Theodore Ziokowski. Volume 3 Edited By Kenneth J. Northcott & With An Introduction By Brian Evenson. V. 1 - 315 pages, V. 2 - 363 pages, V.3-203. Jacket photograph - Frederick Durrenmatt signs books in Orell Fussli Photograph by Jules Vogt. Book & jacket design by Matt Avery. 0226174263, 0226174298, 0226174328.
Anyone who admires Durrenmatt's work cannot pass this collection up.
FROM THE PUBLISHER -
It also looks great on the booksshelf. VOLUME 1: PLAYS - The Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt 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. With these long-awaited translations of his plays, fictions, and essays, Dürrenmatt becomes available again in all his brilliance to the English-speaking world. Dürrenmatt’s concerns are timeless, but they are also the product of his Swiss vantage during the cold war: his key plays, gathered in the first volume of SELECTED WRITINGS, explore such themes as guilt by passivity, the refusal of responsibility, greed and political decay, and the tension between justice and freedom. In The Visit, for instance, an old lady who becomes the wealthiest person in the world returns to the village that cast her out as a young woman and offers riches to the town in exchange for the life of the man, now its mayor, who once disgraced her. Joel Agee’s crystalline translation gives a fresh lease to this play, as well as four others: THE PHYSICISTS, ROMULUS THE GREAT, HERCULES AND THE AUGEAN STABLES, and THE MARRIAGE OF MR. MISSISSIPPI. VOLUME 2: FICTIONS - 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. Apart from THE PLEDGE, a requiem to the detective story that was made into a film starring Jack Nicholson, none of the works in this volume are available elsewhere in English. Among the most evocative fictions included here are two novellas: THE ASSIGNMENT and TRAPS. THE ASSIGNMENT tells the story of a woman filmmaker investigating a mysterious murder in an unnamed Arab country and has been hailed by Sven Birkerts as ‘a parable of hell for an age consumed by images. ’ 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. VOLUME 3: ESSAYS - Dürrenmatt’s essays, gathered in this third volume of SELECTED WRITINGS, are among his most impressive achievements. Their range alone is astonishing: he wrote with authority and charm about art, literature, philosophy, politics, and the theater. The selections here include Dürrenmatt’s best-known essays, such as ‘Theater Problems’ and ‘Monster Essay on Justice and Law,’ as well as the notes he took on a 1970 journey in America This third volume of SELECTED WRITINGS also includes essays that shade into fiction, such as ‘The Winter War in Tibet,’ a fantasy of a third world war waged in a vast subterranean labyrinth—a Plato’s Cave allegory rewritten for our own troubled times. 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. Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a Swiss author and dramatist. He was a proponent of epic theater whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author gained fame largely due to his avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire. One of his leading sentences was: ‘A story is not finished, until it has taken the worst turn’.
Friedrich Dürrenmatt was a member of the Gruppe Olten. Dürrenmatt was born in Konolfingen, in the Emmental, the son of a Protestant pastor. His grandfather Ulrich Dürrenmatt was a conservative politician. The family moved to Bern in 1935. Dürrenmatt began to study of philosophy and German language and literature at the University of Zurich in 1941, but moved to the University of Bern after one semester. In 1943 he decided to become an author and dramatist and dropped his academic career. In 1945-46, he wrote his first play ‘It is written’. On October 11 1946 he married the actress Lotti Geissler. She died on January 16 1983 and Dürrenmatt married again in 1984 to another actress, Charlotte Kerr. Dürrenmatt also some of his own works and his drawings were exhibited in Neuchâtel in 1976 and 1985, as well as in Zürich in 1978. Like Brecht, Dürrenmatt explored the dramatic possibilities of epic theater. His plays are meant to involve the audience in a theoretical debate, rather than as purely passive entertainment. When he was 26, his first play, It Is Written, premiered to great controversy. The story of the play revolves around a battle between a sensation-craving cynic and a religious fanatic who takes scripture literally, all of this taking place while the city they live in is under siege. The play’s opening night in April, 1947 caused fights and protests in the audience. His first major success was the play Romulus the Great. Set in the year 476 A. D. , the play explores the last days of the Roman Empire, presided over, and brought about by its last emperor. The Visit which tells of a rich benefactor visiting her beneficiaries, is the work best known in the United States. The satirical drama The Physicists which deals with issues concerning science and its responsibility for dramatic and even dangerous changes to our world has also been presented in translation. Radio plays published in English include Hercules in the Augean Stables, Incident at Twilight and The Mission of the Vega The two late works ‘Labyrinth’ and ‘Turmbau zu Babel’ are a collection of unfinished ideas, stories, and philosophical thoughts. In 1990, he gave two famous speeches, one in honour of Václav Havel, and the other in honour of Mikhail Gorbachev Dürrenmatt often compared the three Abrahamic religions and Marxism, which he also saw as a religion. Even if there are several parallels between Dürrenmatt and Brecht, Dürrenmatt never took a political position, but represented a pragmatic philosophy of life. In 1969, he traveled in the USA, in 1974 to Israel, and in 1990 to Auschwitz in Poland. Dürrenmatt died on December 14, 1990 in Neuchâtel.