Correspondence

The letters published here document the special friendship between the two most famous Swiss authors of the twentieth century: Max Frisch and Friedrich Durrenmatt. The collection is a psychograph of two temperaments that could not have been more different. Their written correspondence is testimony to a friendship that was at first both critical and respectful. Then, under the pressure of their increasing fame, this friendship turned to a more treating mode expressed with a hint of irony, then became seriously endangered until it finally failed. The long essay by Peter Rued introducing the letters positions them within the context of the author\'s lives and oeuvre, and larger historical events. Detailed notes and a chronicle complete the volume along with visual evidence in the form of photographs and facsimiles of the original letters. (jacket)