From the Berlin Journal

The daily journal of a giant of German literature, touching subjects ranging from everyday life to the political and social conditions in East Germany as viewed from West Berlin. Max Frisch (191191) was a giant of twentieth-century German literature. When Frisch moved into a new apartment in Berlins 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 Frischs 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. From the Berlin Journal now marks the first publication of excerpts from Frischs journal. Here, the unmistakable Frisch is back, full of doubt, with no illusions, and with a playfully sharp eye for the world. From the Berlin Journal pulls from the years 194649 and 196671. Observations about the writers everyday life stand alongside narrative and essayistic texts, as well as finely-drawn portraits of colleagues like Gnter 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.