I'm Not Stiller

by Max Frisch, Michael Bullock (Translator)

Overview

Arrested and imprisoned in a small Swiss town, a prisoner begins this book with an exclamation: "I'm not Stiller!" He claims that his name is Jim White, that he has been jailed under false charges and under the wrong identity. To prove he is who he claims to be, he confesses to three unsolved murders and recalls in great detail an adventuresome life in America and Mexico among cowboys and peasants, in back alleys and docks. He is consumed by "the morbid impulse to convince," but no one believes him. This is a harrowing account part Kafka, part Camus of the power of self-deception and the freedom that ultimately lies in self-acceptance. Simultaneously haunting and humorous, I'm Not Stiller has come to be recognized as "one of the major post-war works of fiction" and a masterpiece of German literature.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781564784506
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	11/01/2006
Series:	Swiss Literature
Pages:	377
Sales rank:	725,807
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.05(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Bullock, himself a novelist and poet, was for many years the official translator of Max Frisch. His translations of books and plays from French and German now number close to 200 and have received many awards.

Editorial Reviews

"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 

"We live out our ideas through our daily lives, after all, and [Frisch] grasps every nuance of those daily habits and compulsions. It is the tension between these details and the larger ambitions — so grandly imagined, so absurdly lived out — that makes the novel work." —New York Times

From the Publisher

A single consciousness contains multitudes: in fathoming it, Frisch evokes the complex reality of a dangerous and enthralling world.

New Statesman

It exudes postwar high seriousness: it cannot wait to show off its many layers of meaning . . . Then comes the voice of Stiller himself: treacherous, evasive and compelling as an Edgar Allan Poe murderer or a Raymond Chandler detective . . . When the curtain comes down one last time on the life of Anatol Ludwig Stiller, it is truly harrowing: it is a spiritual blackout.

The New York Times

Mr. Frisch is not really a novelist of ideas; he's a dramatist of ideas. We live out our ideas through our daily lives, after all, and he grasps every nuance of those daily habits and compulsions. It is the tension between these details and the larger ambitions -- so grandly imagined, so absurdly lived out -- that makes the "I'm Not Stiller" work. -- New York Times

Margo Jefferson

It exudes postwar high seriousness: it cannot wait to show off its many layers of meaning. . . . Then comes the voice of Stiller himself: treacherous, evasive and compelling as an Edgar Allan Poe murderer or a Raymond Chandler detective. . . . When the curtain comes down one last time on the life of Anatol Ludwig Stiller, it is truly harrowing: it is a spiritual blackout.

New York Times

Readers cannot but feel the force of what remains one of the most important novels of the post-war years.

Times Literary Supplement

Described by the publisher as "part Kafka, part Camus," this 1954 novel is the story of an imprisoned man who claims to be another. To prove that he is Jim White, and not Stiller, he provides details on three unsolved murders and his life on the outside.

—Michael Rogers

Library Journal