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A new translation of one of the earliest volumes of Max Frisch's innovative notebooks. Throughout his life, the great Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch (1911-1991) kept a series of diaries, or sketchbooks, as they came to be known in English. First published in English translation in the 1970s, these sketchbooks played a major role in establishing Frisch as, according to the New York Times, "the most innovative, varied and hard-to-categorize of all major contemporary authors." His show more diaries, said the Times, "read like novels and his best novels are written like diaries." Now Seagull Books presents the first unabridged English translation of Sketchbooks, 1946-1949 in a new translation by Simon Pare. This edition reinstates material omitted from the 1977 edition, including a screenplay for an unmade film. In this first volume, which covers the years 1946 to 1949, Frisch chronicles the intellectual and material situation in postwar Europe from the vantage point of a citizen of a neutral, German-speaking country. His notes on travels to the scarred cities of Germany, to Austria, France, Italy, Prague, Wroclaw, and Warsaw paint a complex and stimulating picture of a continent emerging from the rubble as new fault lines are drawn between East and West. As Frisch completes his final architectural projects and garners early success as a writer, he reflects on theater, language, and writing, and he sketches the outlines of plays, including The Fire Raisers and Count Öderland. Whatever experience he chronicles in the sketchbook--whether it's a Bastille Day party, an Italian fish market, or a tightrope display amid the ruins of Frankfurt or an afternoon by Lake Zurich with Bertolt Brecht, to take just a few examples--his keen dramatist's eye immerses the reader in the setting while also probing the deeper significance and motivations underlying the scene. This new translation will serve to draw out the immediacy and contemporary quality of Frisch's observations from the shadow of his status as a classic author, bringing his work to life for a new audience. show lessTags
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194+ Works 10,322 Members
Max Frisch was born in Switzerland in 1911. He attended the University of Zurich and spent six years in the Swiss Army. He also worked as a freelance writer and an architect. Frisch is most famous for writing the novel I'm Not Stiller and the play The Firebugs. Both works explore one of Frisch's major themes: the problematic nature of living life show more without a true understanding of one's identity. Many of his works feature explore this theme, including the plays The Chinese Wall, Andorra: A Play in Twelve Scenes, and Don Juan; or the Love of Geometry. He has also written several other novels, including Homo Faber: A Report, and Man in the Holocene. Frisch was awarded the International Neustadt Prize for Literature in 1987. He died in 1991 in Zurich. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Sketchbook 1946-1949
- Original title
- Tagebuch 1946-1949
- Original publication date
- 1977
- People/Characters*
- Max Frisch
- Original language*
- Deutsch
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 838.9 — Literature & rhetoric German & related literatures German miscellaneous writings 1900-
- LCC
- PT2611 .R814 .Z5213 — Language and Literature German, Dutch and Scandinavian literatures German literature Individual authors or works 1860/70-1960
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 211
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- 154,013
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- (3.72)
- Languages
- 5 — Dutch, English, French, German, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- ASINs
- 14
