The Assignment (Picador Books) [Paperback]

Friedrich Durrenmatt (Author), J. Agee (Translator)

Book Description

Series: Picador Books | Publication Date: July 14, 1989

Durrenmatt's novella is a chilling study of paranoia. From the moment F, a film-maker, accepts the assignment to reconstruct a disturbing and mysterious death she is enmeshed in a web of international personal intrigue.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the Swiss playwright's wracking, brilliantly conceived new novel (published in German in 1986 and resourcefully translated by Agee), nothing is what it seems. Otto von Lambert, a well-known psychiatrist, gives F., a filmmaker, the "assignment" to follow the trail of his late wife, Tina, and learn why and how she was murdered in an unidentified Middle Eastern country, her raped body thrown to the jackals at the base of a mysterious Shi'ite shrine. F. accepts because she is mesmerized by Tina's journal, which is filled with hatred for her husband and intensified by a charged note: "I am being watched." In Durrenmatt's blasted, menacing landscape everyone is being observed by everyone elseliterally, by field glasses, telescope, camera's eye; and figuratively, by the stealthy, obsessive scrutiny of each by each for purposes shrouded in ambiguity. The closer F. approaches some answer, the more it eludes her as mysteries are further coiled and compounded with false leads and shifting or mistaken identities. Out of these mazes within mazes the author extrapolates an arresting metaphysical mystery in 24 brief chapters, each cast as a single, spinning, convoluted sentence, each leading to further enigmas in the jagged, highly pictorial tale. Kierkegaard, who is cited repeatedly, is a presiding spirit; and philosophical, theological, mythic elements, instead of distracting, add depth and resonance to this remarkable tale.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Tina von Lambert lies violated and dead at the foot of the Al-Hakim ruin. Her husband feels he drove her to this sordid end, and in guilty recompense hires F's film crew to document the mysterious circumstances surrounding Tina's death. Against her better judgment, F pursues the trail to a desert hotel where appearances begin to crumble, testing her ability to distinguish reality from perception. In this tightly crafted thriller, his first American publication in nearly 20 years, Durrenmatt demonstrates considerable virtuosity: each of 24 chapters is a single sentence. We may all be "under observation," but the question is, Whose observation? The answer informs this novel's puzzle. Highly recommended. Paul E. Hutchison, Pennsylvania State Univ., University Park
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Picador; New edition edition (July 14, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330308424
• ISBN-13: 978-0330308427
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,654,265 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's like jumping into ice water. Not bedtime reading., October 31, 2000

By 

A. Rohlev (Los Alamos, NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Assignment, or, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers (Paperback)

If literature can be compared to art in style content and imagery, then "The Assignment" is closest to surrealist art. Well at least in imagery and style, the content is at times all to earthly. Style: Single sentence chapters; all the chapters; from a half page to six pages. This can be a bit exhausting to read, but the effect is that of well defined, concentrated urgency. There are no unneeded thoughts or phrases, there can't be since the sentence must flow. Imagery: Surreal, vivid, stark. From the first chapter where an occupied coffin is flown back from M. (assume Morocco) to Switzerland by plane. Not in the plane but trailing behind it tethered by ropes over vast stretches of the sunlit North African desert and the Mediterranean. A weird but beautiful image. A few chapters later leaders of a Moslem sect protest the excavation of a large black cube like ruin by sitting in the sand, in a line, at one corner of the ruin while the rest is cleared. They are dressed in black robes which cover their bodies and heads. They sit there day after day in the cloudless dessert, in the blazing sun, in the wind, in the cold clear nights. A female reporter and her film crew approach them in the bright noonday sun, she nudges one to wake him but he simply falls over, there being nothing left but the skeletal remains still wrapped in the black robe, and the next also falls when pushed, and the next, and the next. Content: Philosophical, stark, at times violent. Topics include the need to be observed (hence the title), freedom (the meaning of life is to be free, but freedom can only be achieved when one realizes that life is meaningless), and a nice odd view of the arms race. There is also a interesting point on the emotional frustration of modern war where a man's bloodlust really can't be satisfied. And also on the depravity of rape where a man's bloodlust can be satisfied.

The book is mostly philosophy. In response to an earlier review, the book isn't kind to women, but it isn't kind to men either. The female reporter is a strong not a weak character. The ending, however, is a let down. You get the impression that Durrenmatt got tired of writing single sentences and wrapped it all up in half a paragraph. Read this book, it's very good, then read some of his other books and plays they are also very good but much more normal .... kind of.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A master spider weaves his web., November 5, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Assignment, or, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers (Paperback)

I'm a big fan of Durrenmatt's and have read everything of his that I can find that's been translated into English. He's written a pair of amazing plays (the Visit and the Physicists) and a handful of thought-provoking, and playful novels. The Assignment strings together incredibly long sentences that entangle the reader in Durrenmatt's astute observations about voyeurism, paranoia, and pre-destination among other things. Or perhaps it's simply a brilliant riff on let A=A. Check it out.

3.0 out of 5 stars An interesting experiment, November 24, 2010

By 

David Bonesteel (Fresno, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Assignment: or, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers (Heritage of Sociology) (Paperback)

A filmmaker is hired to investigate the rape and murder of a woman in an unnamed North African country and becomes entangled in a web of secret plots and repressed sadism.

I am generally impatient with experimental literary techniques because they usually strike me as self-indulgences on the part of the author rather than attempts to communicate with the reader. However, there is something to be said for Friedrich Durrenmatt's use of chapters that consist of a single long sentence. It lends a certain breathlessness to the narrative and forces the author to winnow out all extraneous detail. Indeed, this is a very short novel. In the end, I did not find it effective. Durrenmatt is making a statement about the nature of observation, but it was lost on me, perhaps because the headlong nature of the structure did not invite contemplation. It doesn't help that the plot becomes increasingly preposterous until its deus ex machina ending.