The Assignment
The Assignment
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Summary
The wife of a psychiatrist has been raped and killed near a desert ruin in North Africa. Her husband hires a woman named F to reconstruct the unsolved crime in a documentary film. F is soon thrust into a paranoid world of international espionage where everyone is watched - including the watchers.
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The Assignment by Friedrich Durrenmatt
In Friedrich Durrenmatt's experimental thriller "The Assignment", the wife of a psychiatrist has been raped and killed near a desert ruin in North Africa. Her husband hires a woman named F. to reconstruct the unsolved crime in a documentary film. F. is soon thrust into a paranoid world of international espionage where everyone is watched - including the watchers. After discovering a recent photograph of the supposed murder victim happily reunited with her husband, F. becomes trapped in an apocalyptic landscape riddled with political intrigue, crimes of mistaken identity, and terrorism.F.'s labyrinthine quest for the truth is Durrenmatt's fictionalized warning against the dangers of a technologically advanced society that turns everyday life into one of constant scrutiny. Joel Agee's elegant translation will introduce a generation of English-speaking readers to a master of language, suspense, and dystopia.
"The Assignment is a parable of hell for an age consumed by images" - New York Times Book Review "His most ambitious book.... Dark and devious.... Almost obsessively drawn to mankind's most fiendish crimes." - Chicago Tribune "A tour de force.... Mesmerizing." - Village Voice"
Friedrich Durrenmatt (1921-90) is the author of several books published by the University of Chicago Press, including The Pledge. Joel Agee has translated numerous German authors into English, including Heinrich von Kleist, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Elias Canetti. In 2005 he received the Modern Language Association's Lois Roth Award for his translation of Hans Erich Nossack's The End: Hamburg 1943.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780226174464 |
| ISBN 10 | 0226174468 |
| Title | The Assignment |
| Author | Friedrich Durrenmatt |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The University of Chicago Press |
| Year published | 2008-10-15 |
| Number of pages | 152 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |