Man in the Holocene

by Max Frisch, Geoffrey Skelton (Translator)

Overview

A stunning tour de force, Man in the Holocene constructs a powerful vision of our place in the world by combining the banality of an aging man’s lonely inner life and the objective facts he finds in the books of his isolated home.

As a rainstorm rages outside, Max Frisch’s protagonist, Geiser, watches the mountain landscape crumble beneath landslides and flooding, and speculates that the town will be wiped out by the collapse of a section of the mountain. Seeking refuge from the storm in town, he makes his way through a difficult and dangerous mountain pass, only to abandon his original plan and return home. A compelling meditation by one of Frisch’s most original characters, Man in the Holocene charts Geiser’s desperate attempt to find his place in history and in the confusing and fragile world outside his window.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564784667
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	08/01/2007
Series:	Swiss Literature
Edition description:	Translatio
Pages:	112
Product dimensions:	5.52(w) x 7.98(h) x 0.38(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Max Frisch (1911-1991) was born in Zurich, Switzerland before the First World War and was a soldier in the Second. In the interwar years, he traveled throughout Eastern and Central Europe as a journalist. After serving as a gunner on the Austrian and Italian borders, he followed in his father's footsteps and became an architect. These experiences helped forge the moral consciousness and the concern for human freedom that mark his writing. The author of I'm Not Stiller, Homo Faber, and The Man in the Holocene, and the winner of the Jerusalem Prize, the Heinrich Heine Prize, and Neustadt International Prize for Literature among other honors, Frisch was one of Europe's most important postwar writers. 

Geoffrey Skelton is the translator of Max Frisch's Man in the Holocene, Sketchbook: 1966-1971 and Bluebeard, as well as Peter Weiss's Morat/Sade. Skelton has also edited a number of books on classical music.

Editorial Reviews

"This is my favorite book of all time. An oldie but a goodie. A man is stuck alone in his home during a storm in the Swiss Alps. What does he think about—and how does he pass the time? It's a short read, a little more than 100 pages—and every word leaves you on the edge of your seat. This is the one book I'd take with me on a desert island. An incredible look into history, human memory—and a meditation on life itself." —Newsweek

"Poetry of the mind rather than the senses—sparse and austere, with every detail chosen for its resonances . . . A small book but a major achievement." —The Washington Post 

"Haunting, sad, yet lovely . . . An important, disturbing and powerful novel that deserves attention." —Chicago Sun-Times

"Frisch is a great, and even an inspiring, writer, because he gives us the unique sense that the act of analysis is a passionate act, impelled by our fear of the world's dissolution and our knowledge of our own fragility." —Newsday

From the Publisher

Frisch is a great, and even an inspiring, writer, because he gives us the unique sense that the act of analysis is a passionate act, impelled by our fear of the world's dissolution and our knowledge of our own fragility.

Newsday

Poetry of the mind rather than the senses—sparse and austere, with every detail chosen for its resonances . . . A small book but a major achievement.

Washington Post

Haunting, sad, yet lovely . . . An important, disturbing and powerful novel that deserves attention.

Chicago Sun-Times

....This luminous parable of indeterminable purport is a masterpiece. -- The New York Times Books of the Century

Charles McGrath