Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Dürrenmatt once wrote of himself: I can best be understood if one grasps grotesqueness,â and The Visit is a consummate, alarming Dürrenmatt blend of hilarity, horror, and vertigo. The play takes place somewhere in Central Europeâ and tells of an elderly millionairess who, merely on the promise of her millions, …

The world’s greatest physicist, Johann Wilhelm Möbius, 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 …

The mystery follows 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. The thriller brings existential …

Set in a small town in Switzerland, The Pledge centers around the murder of a young girl and the detective who promises the victim’s mother he will find the perpetrator. After deciding the wrong man has been arrested for the crime, the detective lays a trap for the real killer—with all the patience of a master …

Police chief inspector Baerlach has just undergone surgery when his friend and doctor, Hugentobler, thinks he recognizes one of his own colleagues on a LIFE Magazine picture. The article is about Dr. Neyle, a nazi doctor who practiced surgery without anesthesia in the extermination camps. This Dr. Neyle could now be …

Der Auftrag is a 1986 novella by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt. The first English publication appeared in 1988, translated by Joel Agee. The experimental narrative is divided into twenty-four parts, each one a single sentence spanning many pages. In his forward to the 2008 English language edition, Theodore …

The Execution of Justice is a 1985 novel by the Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt. It tells the story of an attorney who is tasked to reinvestigate a man sentenced for murder. The book criticises elements of the legal system and ponders on the nature of justice. It was adapted into the 1993 film Justice, directed by …