Zurich Transit (The Seagull Library of German Literature) - Softcover

Frisch, Max

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0857428187 ISBN 13: 9780857428189

Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd, 2021

Synopsis

This screenplay by Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch was developed from an episode in his 1964 novel Gantenbein, or A Wilderness of Mirrors. At the center of both works is Theo Ehrismann, a man who cannot seem to change his life no matter how many times he resolves to do so. Chance comes to Theo one day upon returning from a trip abroad―he arrives home to read his own obituary in the paper. He shows up just on time for his own funeral and observes the attending mourners, and yet he is not able to reveal himself to them, and especially not to his wife. “How does one say that he is alive,” wonders Theo.

Life, as Frisch said, “is the sum of events that happen by chance, and it always could as well have turned out differently; there is not a single action or omission that does not allow for variables in the future.” Zurich Transit presents Frisch at the height of his dramatic powers and exemplifies his ardent believe in a dramaturgy of coincidence rather than causality.

About this title

About the Author

Max Frisch (1911–91) was one of the giants of twentieth-century literature, achieving fame as a novelist, playwright, diarist, and essayist. His works include “Andorra,” I’m Not Stiller, Man in the Holocene, and Biography: A Game, the last also published by Seagull Books. Birgit Schreyer Duarte is a freelance dramaturge, theater director, and translator. She has also translated works by Pascal Mercier and Roland Schimmelpfennig.

Edition details

• Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0857428187
• ISBN 13: 9780857428189
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 88