Books by Friedrich Durrenmatt

The world's greatest physicist, Johann Wilhelm Mobius, is in a madhouse, haunted by recurring visions of King Solomon. He is kept company by two other equally deluded scientists: one who thinks he is Einstein, another who believes he is Newton. It soon becomes evident, however, that these three are not as harmlessly lunatic as they appear. Are they, in fact, really mad? Or are they playing some murderous game, with the world as the stake? For Mobius has uncovered the mystery of the universe--and therefore the key to its destruction--and Einstein and Newton are vying for this secret that would enable them to rule the earth.

In The Visit (original title Der Besuch der alten Dame), Claire Zachanassian, now a multimillion heiress and an older woman, returns to the impoverished town of her youth with a dreadful bargain: in exchange for returning the town to prosperity through her vast wealth, she wants the townspeople to kill the man who jilted her.

In the town of Slurry, New York, post-war recession has bitten. Claire Zachanassian, improbably beautiful and impenetrably terrifying, returns to her hometown as the world's richest woman. The locals hope her arrival signals a change in their fortunes, but they soon realise that prosperity will only come at a terrible price...

"The Execution of Justice was first published as Justiz in Zurich, 1985" -- t. p. verso

A pocket-sized existential mystery, as thought-provoking as it is thrilling

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. 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. 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.

This volume offers bracing new translations of two precursors to the modern detective novel by Friedrich Durrenmatt, whose genre-bending mysteries recall the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet and anticipate the postmodern fictions of Paul Auster and other contemporary neo-noir novelists. Both mysteries follow Inspector Barlach as he moves through worlds in which the distinction between crime and justice seems to have vanished. In "The Judge and His Hangman," Barlach forgoes the arrest of a murderer in order to manipulate him into killing another, more elusive criminal. And in "Suspicion," Barlach pursues a former Nazi doctor by checking into his clinic with the hope of forcing him to reveal himself. The result is two thrillers that bring existential philosophy and the detective genre into dazzling convergence.

Includes the full German text, accompanied by German-English vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the work in its social and historical context.

Ophold på vejen handler om et ordinært menneske, sælger af profession, der ved en tilfældighed bliver deltager i nogle pensionerede juristers dæmoniske selskabsleg med retssag og domstol. Om retsprincipper, skyld og ansvar. Fortællingen kan karakteriseres både som lystspil, tragedie og kriminalroman. Overdådigt morsom, men spændende som en krimi og med en tankevækkende og dæmonisk pointe."I den lille roman Ophold på vejen overgår denne dygtige schweiziske forfatter sig selv. Det hele er en leg og dog dybeste alvor. Og et barokt vid, en løssluppen humor bærer historien ... At det er en fremragende kriminalroman-spøg, med dyster alvor bag, er sikkert. At den må indlemmes blandt de fine klassiske kriminalromaner, er jeg ligeså sikker på." – Vagn Riisager, Kristeligt Dagblad"Tankevækkende og underholdende ... med veloplagt dæmoni underminerer han vanetænkning og sætter et spørgsmålstegn ved det absolutte. ... i sin koncentrerede form, sin sted- og tidsenhed er Ophold på vejen et overdådigt lystspil i svøb. Et lystspil med en dæmonisk-alvorlig pointe." – Ove Abildgaard, Aktuelt"... et stykke nutidsfilosofi indlagt i en gyser." – Jyllandsposten