Max Frisch

a report

Homo Faber

I'm Not Stiller

شتيلر

Roman.

Mein Name sei Gantenbein

Ingeborg Bachmann

Der Briefwechsel

»Wir haben es nicht gut gemacht.«

Bernd Matzkowski

Andorra. Erläuterungen und Materialien. (Lernmaterialien)

Montauk

Bluebeard

Blaubart

أمير الأراضي البور

Biedermann und die Brandenstifter

Herbert Caro

Homo faber

The protagonist of the book is Walter Faber, a middle-class UNESCO engineer who thinks the universe is logical and measured. Strange occurrences threaten his sense of security. He makes an impossible emergency landing in the Mexican desert, his friend Joachim hangs himself in the forest, he falls in love with a woman who dies of a concussion, and he engages in an incestuous relationship. Finally, stomach cancer strikes Faber, but it is too late for him to make any changes to his course of action.

The novel tells the story of a middle-class UNESCO engineer called Walter Faber, who believes in rational, calculated world. Strange events undermine his security - an emergency landing in a Mexican desert against all odds, his friend Joachim hangs himself in the Mexican jungle, and he falls in love with a woman who dies of a concussion, he has an incestuous affair. Finally Faber becomes ill with stomach cancer, but it is too late for him to change his life.

Ein Bericht

Andorra

The daily journal of a giant of German literature, touching subjects ranging from everyday life to the political and social conditions in East Germany as viewed from West Berlin. Max Frisch (1911-91) was a giant of twentieth-century German literature. When Frisch moved into a new apartment in Berlin's Sarrazinstrasse, he began keeping a journal, which he came to call the Berlin Journal. A few years later, he emphasized in an interview that this was by no means a "scribbling book," but rather a book "fully composed." The journal is one of the great treasures of Frisch's literary estate, but the author imposed a retention period of twenty years from the date of his death because of the "private things" he noted in it. From the Berlin Journal now marks the first publication of excerpts from Frisch's journal. Here, the unmistakable Frisch is back, full of doubt, with no illusions, and with a playfully sharp eye for the world. From the Berlin Journal pulls from the years 1946-49 and 1966-71. Observations about the writer's everyday life stand alongside narrative and essayistic texts, as well as finely-drawn portraits of colleagues like Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson, Wolf Biermann, and Christa Wolf, among others. Its foremost quality, though, is the extraordinary acuity with which Frisch observed political and social conditions in East Germany while living in West Berlin.

From the Berlin Journal

Stories, authobiography, impressions, interviews, and reflections on a variety of topics from politics to women, marriage, friendship, and death. Translated by Geoffrey Skelton. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book.

Sketchbook 1966-1971

A reissue of a comic and tragic play that asks just how much of our life we could--or would--change if we got another chance. In this play by Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch, a middle-aged behavioral researcher Kürmann is given the opportunity to start his life over at any point he chooses and change his decisions and actions in matters both serious and mundane--He could save his marriage, become politically active, take better care of his health, or even change the color of his living room furniture. Despite his intention to apply the wisdom he has acquired with age, Kürmann finds himself inexorably trapped in the same decisions. Ultimately proving fatal, Kürmann's life game interrogates how much of our own path is shaped by seemingly random factors and how much is in fact predetermined by our own limited, conditioned selves. The play's central idea--that our lives are nothing but a self-conscious play with imaginary identities--is brilliantly captured in Biography's dramaturgical form, setting up a theatre rehearsal as the metaphor for the endless possibilities and variables of the game of life. Frisch's own revised, dramatically heightened version of his play celebrates not only the theatre as a form of self-expression but also the human condition in all its potential and limitations as it showcases both comic and tragic outcomes that define all our lives.

A Game

Biography

Max Frisch

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