This novel by esteemed Swiss writer Max Frisch is an exploration of the question: Why don t we live when we know we re here just this one time, just one single, unrepeatable time in this unutterably magnificent world? This outcry against the emptiness of ordinary everyday life uttered by the hero of Frisch s book is countered by an answer from the silence he meets when face-to-face with death.

When "An Answer from the Silence "begins, the protagonist has just turned thirty and is engaged to be married and about to start work as a teacher. Frightened by the idea of settling down, he...

The inner workings of the European Union are as much a mystery to those living within its confines as they are to those of us who reside elsewhere. The Brussels bureaucracy that sets many of the EU's policies feels remote to its citizens, yet the influence of its decisions can extend worldwide and throughout the global marketplace. In this timely and insightful essay, Hans Magnus Enzensberger blends reportage, argument, and analysis in order to make sense of the EU's present political and economic roles and examine the EU's origins and inherent contradictions. In Enzensberger's view,...

Austrian writer Ingeborg Bachmann (1926 73) is recognized as one of the most important novelists, poets, and playwrights of postwar German literature. As befitting such a versatile writer, her "War Diary" is not a day-by-day journal but a series of sketches, depicting the last months of World War II and the first year of the subsequent British occupation of Austria. These...