Assignment

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 unwittingly 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 fresh generation of English-speaking readers to one of European literature s masters of language, suspense, and dystopia.  The narrative is accelerated from the start. . . . As the novella builds to its horripilating climax, we realize the extent to which all values have thereby been inverted. 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 

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 unwittingly 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 fresh generation of English-speaking readers to one of European literature s masters of language, suspense, and dystopia.  The narrative is accelerated from the start. . . . As the novella builds to its horripilating climax, we realize the extent to which all values have thereby been inverted. 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