From the Berlin journal
By: Max Frisch ; edited by Thomas Strässle ; with the cooperation of Margit Unser ; translated by Wieland Hoban
Contributors: Strässle, Thomas, 1972- editor, writer of afterword; Unser, Margit, editor; Hoban, Wieland, translator
Series: The Swiss list; Swiss list
Publisher: Seagull Books
Published: 2017
Language: eng
Number of pages: 220
ISBN-13: 9780857424334
Copyright date: 2017
Subjects: Swiss Authors; Homes and haunts; Diaries
Work titles: Diaries
Description: Max Frisch (1911-91) was a giant of twentieth-century German literature. When Frisch moved into a new apartment in Berlin's Sarrazinstrasse, he began keeping a journal, which he came to call the Berlin Journal. A few years later, he emphasized in an interview that this was by no means a "scribbling book," but rather a book "fully composed." The journal is one of the great treasures of Frisch's literary estate, but the author imposed a retention period of twenty years from the date of his death because of the "private things" he noted in it. This work now marks the first publication of excerpts from Frisch's journal. Here, the unmistakable Frisch is back, full of doubt, with no illusions, and with a playfully sharp eye for the world. This work pulls from the years 1946-49 and 1966-71 [that is 1973-1974]. Observations about the writer's everyday life stand alongside narrative and essayistic texts, as well as finely-drawn portraits of colleagues like Günter Grass, Uwe Johnson, Wolf Biermann, and Christa Wolf, among others. Its foremost quality, though, is the extraordinary acuity with which Frisch observed political and social conditions in East Germany while living in West Berlin.
Notes: Translation from the German of: Aus dem Berliner Journal.

Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: From notebook 1 (1973); title: From notebook 2 (1973-74); title: Notes; title: Afterword / Thomas Strässle.