Friedrich Durrenmatt

These translations of Friedrich Durrenmatt s essays introduce the writer to a new generation of readers.The Swiss writer Friedrich Durrenmatt (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. With these long-awaited translations of his plays, fictions, and essays, Durrenmatt becomes available again in all his brilliance to the English-speaking world. Durrenmatt 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 Durrenmatt 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 (in which he finds the United States increasingly susceptible to every kind of fascism ). This volume 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. Durrenmatt 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.