This volume offers bracing new translations of two precursors to the modern detective novel by Friedrich Durrenmatt, whose genre-bending mysteries recall the work of Alain Robbe-Grillet and anticipate the postmodern fictions of Paul Auster and other contemporary neo-noir novelists. Both mysteries follow Inspector Barlach as he moves through worlds in which the distinction between crime and justice seems to have vanished. In The Judge and His Hangman, Barlach forgoes the arrest of a murderer in order to manipulate him into killing another, more elusive criminal. And in Suspicion,...

Melodrama / Characters: 16 male, 4 female

Scenic Requirements: Interior

The scene is a madhouse and the focus is on three inmates who are nuclear physicists. One thinks he is Newton and another, Einstein. The third has visitations from Solomon. They appear to be nice, likeable lunatics, but nothing is as simple as it seems. Are they really mad? Or are they playing some murderous game with the world as the stake? Who is earnest and who is the spy? Gradually we learn that each has been led down the path to moral destruction, past the signposts of truth, the purity of science, and personal...

Kaiser Romulus Augustus hlt das rmische Weltreich fr unmoralisch und will es als Richter Roms liquidieren, indem er 467 n. Chr. tatenlos die einmarschierenden Germanen erwartet. Germanenfrst Odoaker freilich, ein leidenschaftlicher Hhnerzchter wie Romulus, hat keinen sehnlicheren Wunsch als sich zu unterwerfen, um zu verhindern, da die Germanen endgltig ein Volk der Helden werden.

Claire Zachanassian, now a multimillion heiress and an older woman, returns to the impoverished town of her youth with a dreadful bargain: in exchange for returning the town to prosperity through her vast wealth, she wants the townspeople to kill the man who jilted her.

The full German text of Durrenmatt's play is accompanied by German-English vocabulary. Notes and a detailed introduction in English put the work in its social and historical context.

"The Execution of Justice was first published as Justiz in Zurich, 1985" -- t. p. verso

In the town of Slurry, New York, post-war recession has bitten. Claire Zachanassian, improbably beautiful and impenetrably terrifying, returns to her hometown as the world's richest woman. The locals hope her arrival signals a change in their fortunes, but they soon realise that prosperity will only come at a terrible price... Friedrich Durrenmatt's visionary revenge play, one of the great achievements of modern German-language theatre, has been transported to mid-twentieth-century America by the acclaimed playwright Tony Kushner. This revelatory new adaptation of The Visit opened...

Významný švýcarský autor své vyznání, že „ke šlendriánu tohoto století se pro nás hodí už jen komedie“, uplatňuje i ve svém dramatu o antickém hrdinovi Herkulovi, který vykonal za svého života tucet velikých hrdinských činů. Zavede nás do Elidy, která se za vlády Augiáše topí v hnoji. Ten neumí situaci řešit a tak se obrací na vyhlášeného hrdinu Herkula a žádá ho, aby zanedbanou Elidu odhnojil. Dokáže statečný rek zdolat i tento nadlidský úkol? Hra vychází v překladu J. Stacha jako 158. svazek edice D.