Sketchbooks, 1946-1949

A new translation of Max Frisch's Sketchbooks, 1946-1949, is now available from Seagull Books. This edition includes material omitted from the 1977 edition and a screenplay for an unmade film. Frisch chronicles postwar Europe from the perspective of a citizen of a neutral, German-speaking country, exploring the intellectual and material situation in the aftermath of World War II. His notes on travels to Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Prague, Wroclaw, and Warsaw paint a complex and stimulating picture of a continent emerging from the rubble. The new translation will bring Frisch's work to life for a new audience.

Format: Hardback
Length: 400 pages
Publication date: 20 May 2022
Publisher: Seagull Books London Ltd

A fresh interpretation of one of Max Frisch's groundbreaking notebooks is presented in this new translation.

The great Swiss playwright and novelist Max Frisch (1911-1991) maintained a series of diaries, or sketchbooks, throughout his life, as they came to be known in English. These sketchbooks played a significant 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 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 OEderland. 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.

Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780857429766