I really liked this book. It is a dark drama, one that is frightening to hear. I acted in this play and I decided to pick up the book since I liked it so much. It's about a man named Biederman. Despite the warnings of "firebugs," or what we would call more-commonly arsonists, he invited a man into his house. A large, burly man that he couldn't say no to. He gave him home in the attic of his own house. His wife objected, of course, because she didn't want anyone who may be a pyromaniac living in her home. In the morning she promised herself she would get rid of the man in a perfectly polite manner. Instead, the man gave her the sad story of his youth and Frau Biederman allowed him into her house because she felt sorry for the man. So, the man invited a friend of his, without consulting Herr Biederman, by the name of Eisenring. Together they collected sawdust and oil barrels in the attic, and even promised Herr Biederman that they were the firebugs of the city and that they were going to burn the house down. But because it is his house, Gottlieb Biederman does not dismiss the two from his house. This is the story of a man who refuses to believe, and then blames all his mistakes on fate. I really enjoyed this creepy book. I think people who respect a drama such as his will, too.

I received this as a present, waited a few months, and then read it in the course of a single day. This short play is about a middle-class businessman whose biggest anxiety revolves around the Firebugs, men in the city who are responsible for a recent rash of arsons. They enter homes as guests and, after staying the night or dining, take advantage of their hosts' hospitality and trust and burn down their homes. The protagonist, at the height of such crimes, allows a couple of young men to spend the night at his house and refuses to believe (because of pride or trust or some other variable) that the sawdust, matches, and gasoline that they bring into his attic could have anything to do with malicious intents. Frisch prevents the reader from really feeling sorry for the protagonist, who is humorously pathetic. The most interesting part, to me, is that what seems at first glance to be a caricature of human nature is, in fact, so close to reality.

"I'm Not Stiller," by the Swiss writer Max Frisch exudes postwar high seriousness; it cannot wait to show off its many layers of meaning. First, "A Note to the Reader" informs us that we are being permitted to study "The strange history of Anatol Ludwig Stiller, sculptor, husband, lover . . . prisoner": the notebooks he wrote while in prison and his prosecutor's postscript. Then come several august lines from Kirkegaard on man's passion for freedom: the need to "choose oneself," rule out every possibility of becoming something else and, in that difficult choice, find happiness. Then comes the voice of Stiller himself: treacherous, evasive and compelling as an Edgar Allan Poe murderer or a Raymond Chandler detective.

He is a prisoner in Switzerland (a country "so clean one can hardly breathe for hygiene") and the Swiss officers who arrest him are convinced he is a certain Anatol Stiller, who disappeared six years ago, leaving behind a wife, a mistress, a moderately successful career and a few minor political scandals. But he insists he is Jim White, an American with a past that includes Mexican peasants, Texas cowboys, the docks and back alleys of Northern California, and three murders, as yet untraced.

Murders are committed, as it turns out, but as Stiller is brought face to face with the woman who says she is his wife and with the prosecutor who says Stiller has had an affair with his wife, it becomes clear that the murders in question are emotional, metaphorical and discreetly bourgeois. What binds Stiller and his strong-willed but long-suffering wife, Julika? A vacuum: the fact that they have never felt happy together or complete apart. What sets his dream of being another man in motion? A failure of nerve while fighting the Fascists in the Spanish Civil War. And his homeland, economically secure, politically neutral Switzerland is "incapable of suffering in any way over a spiritual compromise," he says.

Mr. Frisch is not really a novelist of ideas; he's a dramatist of ideas. We live out our ideas through our daily lives, after all, and he grasps every nuance of those daily habits and compulsions. It is the tension between these details and the larger ambitions -- so grandly imagined, so absurdly lived out -- that makes the novel work.

For half of my life (i.e. for 18 years up to now), Max Frisch's "Stiller" - which I've read in German - has been my favorite book, closely followed by "Gantenbein" by the same author, and I'm sure it will keep so for the rest of my life. Why? Well, the "Stiller" is a very rich book with several themes and several "layers", so it has something for everyone. The book has a plot which is exiting in itself, but it has more. There are worked in, for example, some little "tales" which at first glance seem to stand quite apart from the rest of the story, but at closer inspection you might recognize them as little parables which illustrate the emotional background of Stiller who always writes about himself (whether directly or indirectly). The readers are left with the task to reconstruct the whole story by themselves, because all they get is limited and necessarily subjective information. This is due to the special situation the writer is in: he is expected to reveal his true identity to the Swiss authorities, who suspect him to be a long-missed citizen of their town and have arrested him to find out. So the matter of Truth is one of the central questions of the book, and the reader is invited to judge on whose side the truth is. Of course, it is not possible that there is more than one truth - or is it?

There are other existential questions the story deals with: trust, for example, or self-expectation, or the question of guilt in human relations. For those of you who are more interested in psychological highlights than in philosophical issues: the book contains superb descriptions of the Swiss mentality and the American style of life, of men and women and their differences, of architects and prison warders and so on. Max Frisch is a very clear-sighted, accurate observer, and even when he is describing in every detail the scenery of a deserted building site on Sunday, it's not boring for a second! The only thing I wonder is if the book is perhaps too European for a Non-European reader. But find out by yourself!

This is the second "sketchbook" (after 1946-49) that Frisch published. The author is clearly influenced by the time: long-haired students sometimes pay a visit to him, the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights Movement (with Martin Luther King's death) are themes that appear very frequently, especially due to the fact that Frisch made two trips to the USA at that time.

The sketchbook is essentially made out of the following parts: 1. newspaper cutouts or TV / radio talks, sometimes commented by the author 2. sketches for short stories 3. his impressions mainly from several voyages (to the USA, the USSR and Japan), but also from his home country, Switzerland, all including political reflections 4. questionnaires (about death, women, children, property...) that are very useful if you want to think a bit about yourself.

Frisch's sketchbooks are a must-have if you want to analyse his work as a novelist and playwriter, but they are also a good purchase just to make yourself think a bit.

This is my all-time favorite book! I read it as an undergraduate German major - in German, of course! The story has so many messages - how what we don't face will come back to us; how much of life we miss when we're to afraid to live it; how things become more intense and beautiful when love is in our hearts. The characters are developed in such a loving manner that I found myself liking and sympathizing with all, despite their faults. I think that this book makes a great summer read. Contrary to the prior review, I would not recommend the movie based on this book. I was very excited when I heard that Sam Shepard was tackling this project, but I was ultimately disappointed. There is no replacing the real thing!

"Homo Faber", the book I have known, since my best friend recommended it to me. The frist time I read it. I was so dazled by it, when I was finished with it I had to get a English version for my friend. I still remember her reading the book, walking the hall, her head deep in reading ... It is a book which for me, is brought throught the philosphy of Camus to the description from Mr. Faber that finds his ultimate passion and love to his daughter ... Sabeth is one of the most yearned and real character I have read. It is not only a book of our time, it is also a book of the modern man that is still so true today and always will be. Recommended to be read over and over again in its written german and second translated language ...

This report is a difficult lovestory. The dry life of a technologist faints more and more during a love-relationship with his own daughter. The world of probability and dull nature changes into the world of "family" and love, death and warm rain. Max Frisch did already a wonderful job in the original, german version, but even translated it will enchant you. I give this book 5 stars, because it is "eyeglue" and won't let you go. It made it happen that I can see the nature in a different way and it is still influencing my life. The end was completely shocking, but it was the right one. This book is recommended for people who want to read an experience and not just a pulp pamphlet.

"A man has been through an experience, now he is looking for the story of his experience"

That is the starting point of this breathtaking pseudo novel. And here I am not trying to debase the book by using the word pseudo: it is just that I have the sensation that Frisch has been writing down notes aimed at something else that is supposed to be a novel. He's got the man; he's got the experiences; now he must build the story. And with this purpose, he explores every feasible event that may occur to the character.

He proposes for example: "Let's say my name is Gantenbein." and goes on, "Let's pretend I am blind". And he deals with all the possible consequences that may be derived from his assumption. What does it entail to fake blindness in the realm of everyday life, love, and friendship? Is there any room for jealousy when blindness prevents us from seeing the evidence? Now let's call the man Enderlin, let's suppose he's about to die, and let's give him a lover. And let's his lover be Gantenbein's wife. Furthermore, let's Gantenbein even be Enderlin; assume his wife is an actress, and allow her cheating blind-faked Gantenbein, and so on.

The result is a beautiful mosaic of characters that makes up the draft for the two main characters, Gantenbein and Lila, just a man and a woman, a modern couple. And of course, there is also "the situation", plotted in all imaginable ways, which may make the reader recognize him or herself sooner or later along the book.

Boring, funny or difficult to read are definetely neither accurate, nor scientifically adequate adjectives one should use to describe and classify a novel (not a book, but a novel). Frisch's Gantenbein is not to be evaluated emotionally, but rationnally. It should therefore not be grasped as a love story, or one about (so-called) human feelings, but as a text mainly dealing with the problem of identity, about a decentered I. Frisch manages to create not only an excellent experimentalist piece of art, but aswell a representation of the internal tension of personality, including extremely insightful auto-reflexive passages on Art and Literature. Definetely one of the finest writers of German language of all times.

Gantenbein tells the story of a man who sees his love and marriage falling apart. In his attempt to look for a rescue, he envisions different scenarios (which may, to the superficial reader, appear to be inconsistencies) that would help him to find a way around the unavoidable. The different scenarios are both, very funny and also insightful. This is an outstanding novel.

Herr Geiser, a widowed pensioner living alone in the Ticino valley, is trapped in his house by endless days and nights of torrential rains and thunderstorms. Rumors of landslides blocking the only access to the valley have reached him, and he has observed cracks and cave-ins around his house. While fear and solitude are closing in on him, he tries hard to stay in control, to hold on to rationality. Preparing for a siege, he starts by taking stock of provisions, but ends by assessing his mental equipment: his memory fails him repeatedly, and he catches himself doing - or thinking of doing - irrational things.

He seeks reassurance by testing his cognitive functions; he still knows some basic geometry, some history, some geology - things an educated man should know. Eager to nail down the fragments of his mental armature, he copies entries from the encyclopedia and tacks the paper slips to the wall. When this proves too burdensome, he simply cuts out whole paragraphs and tapes them up in his "gallery". By analysis and classification, by naming and describing things and fitting them into systems, he tries to impose order on chaos. But disorder keeps intruding: cobwebs irritate him, and he nearly wrecks the staircase trying to get rid of them. The appearance of a spotted salamander in the bathroom upsets him, triggering visions of dinosaurs and retrogressive metamorphosis. Reading passages of the Bible provides no comfort: Geiser does not believe in the Flood. He is a skeptic, a child of the enlightened 20th century.

The anguish and frustration he feels is palpable, although the language is unemotional, almost impersonal. Geological processes serve as metaphors for crumbling and slipping mental functions: erosion, landslide, flooding, blockage, bypass, rockfalls, heaps of debris. There is a touch of gallows humor in Geiser's futile attempts to put his house in order and to conceal or rationalize his mishaps. His long-term memory is admirably intact; he remembers every detail of a mountain climb 50 years ago, of a sandstorm near Baghdad, of a visit to the primordial landscape of Iceland. Finally, he makes a gallant and desperate attempt to escape over a steep mountain pass to Italy. But when he is in sight of his goal, after a harrowing climb through fog and rain, he decides to return to his house in the valley. The knowledge that " he could have done it" gives him great satisfaction.

He suffers a stroke and is found by his daughter, who opens a window and lets in a gust of air, scattering the paper slips. Seeing his precious "gallery" in a confused and useless heap on the floor, Geiser wonders if any of this stuff was worth knowing: "Nature needs no names". Naming things is not synonymous with understanding them or with having dominion over them. Geiser is content to let go. The village stands unharmed, "wooded as in the stone age", and man is a latecomer of fragile existence, who tends to do irrational things and needs constant reassurances.

Frisch tells this story in spare, unadorned prose. It is simple and profound, disturbing and oddly comforting.

I read this book first as a teen-ager when it appeared in The New Yorker. I kept intending to put it down, it was so strange (especially for a teen-ager), but it was so compelling that I read every word. It has stuck with me ever since -- not as a conscious memory but more as a spiritual one (ick -- sorry -- I usually hate stuff like that, but there it is). What I mean is that it changed my view of the world, making me realize the individual's small place in it, which can be a very comforting realization anytime things go all topsy turvy in your life. Now I am re-reading it at 46 and enjoying it even more; in fact, I am going to give it to my father who is terminally ill. Frisch's book Homo Faber is much different -- a tragic fable with lots or mythic references -- but also excellent. What a writer he was!

My life was greatly enriched by reading the superb English translation of Frisch's "Man in the Holocene". Frisch piles intimate, mundane details into a metaphor for the human condition and allows the reader to draw the larger inferences. An isolated alpine cottage becomes all the world we need. The need to understand our world is balanced by the depressing realization that we know less every day as we age. As Herr's options close in, we realize what Frisch has brought us to..Man in the Holocene. Fifteen years after reading this book, it is still the first I recommend to a new acquaintance. You'll think of it every time you mislay your car keys. Absolutely important and finely crafted. A must read.

This play is about a man who harbors arsonists in his home. He believes that by becoming friends with them, he can protect his home, and they also have a secret to blackmail him with. All in all, this is a cleverly writen play which not only humorously tells the story about Biedermann but it also gives insights into Max Frisch's thoughts about the rise and fall of Nazism. I would recommend this to all intermediate German readers as it is an interesting play and an interesting comment on life.

This is one of the classic german plays reflecting the circumstances which lead to the Nazi regime. it illustrades that "turning away" from problems and ignorance might ultimately result in desaster. its a very worthwhile lesson to be learned, espacially in a country which lacks the same kind of history as germany. its a strog meaasge to all people addicted to their own peace......

Sorry for writing in English, but my German isn't too good.

"Biedermann und die Brandstifer" translates as Biedermann and the Arsonists, more or less. It's the story of a stupid, rich company owner named Biedermann, who lives with his wife and a maid. He is worried about arsonists, but when a large, strange man appears at his door, and both terrifies and flatters him, he lets him stay, though the man seems suspiciously like an arsonist.

This continues; soon more people are staying at the Biedermanns' house. The police come to investigate, but Biedermann turns them away. He's afraid the police won't just arrest the arsonists, but will also arrest him, because he became rich using another man's formula. So he is complicit, and pretends the arsonists aren't really arsonists. He hopes if he flatters and feeds them, they'll leave without burning his house.

There are three arsonists: a common man, a man from the upper middle class, and an intellectual, who later distances himself from the others. He wanted to burn things to make way for a better world, but they burn things simply because they like fire and sirens. The play is sort of an allegory about the rise of the Nazi Party. It's called "A Lehrstueck Ohne Lehre," or a teaching play without a lesson, because it says people never learn. Biedermann reads about arsonists in the newspaper, but doesn't learn how to keep them away from his house. People learn about the rise of hideous political parties, but then let others rise in their place.

But that all sounds depressing, and really the play is very funny. It uses a lot of techniques invented by Berthold Brecht, to keep you from emotionally identifying with the action on stage; you're supposed to think, instead. The characters talk directly to the audience, and there's a Greek chorus dressed as firemen. It's serious, but you don't notice that so much at first, because it's funny. I recommend this play very much, and would love to see it performed.

Andorra is a great theatric work. From the first page you'll recognize the obvious WWII undertones of the Nazi terror against the Jews. This work is powerful, because, even as just the Reader, you feel like you're being dragged along with the events of the story - they are looming, unescapable, irresistable. You know what the end of the story will be long before you get there, but you keep dreading it, hoping that something will intervene to stave off the impending disaster. Reading this drama will give you a stark picture of the inevitability of events, which, once set into motion, become incapable of being stopped by anyone.