Customer Reviews

Der Richter und sein Henker (German Edition)

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In Der Richter und Sein Henker, known in English as The Judge and his Executioner, Durrenmatt presents a classical mystery story with true literary elements and remarkable characters. The story focuses on a terminally ill police detective whose partner had been murdered. Over the course of a few days, the reader is allowed into the mind of a truly good man and his truly evil nemesis, and learns that life is not filled with direct justice. The good man can be the judge, but only evil can be the executioner. A rewarding ending, a well-written book, and an altogether stunning read. If you speak any German at all, you would do well to treat yourself to the original as opposed to the translations. Enjoy!

My German 4 AP class used this book as our second semester reader. It was great. It had an interesting plot, unlike most other texts I've read in a foreign language, and it wasn't too hard, so that with a little help from our teacher, we were able to figure out what was going on. I would highly reccomend this to any upper level German class, or someone who is jut looking for a good German book.

In many mysteries the all-important clue or guilty party is introduced in the closing pages of the book. No deus ex machina here. The solution is right there from the beginning. Inspector Barlach doesn't have more information than the reader; Barlach is just smarter or, at least, smarter than this reader.

The book is an almost painless way to move from stories written especially for students to works of literature in the original language. Durrenmatt's style is simple, clear, straightforward. The book is not just a Krimi. Durrenmatt uses the mystery genre, as he did in the Versprechen, to explore conflicts between justice and morality.

Also recommended for students looking for works in German is Eigentlich Mochte Frau Blum den Milchmann Kennenlernen by Peter Bichsel. This is a collection of charming, very short stories -- most, no more than two pages long.

As you start to read German, if you have a Kindle, you can make reading German a little easier by changing the Kindle default dictionary to German-English. Move the cursor in front of the word instead of grabbing the Langensheidt.

The book has extensive footnotes, an extensive vocabulary and questions and exercises on every chapter. It is a well written detective novel by a world renown writer. The language is not too terribly difficult, depending on how precise you want to translate. Believe me, you will enjoy this book. It was made into a movie called, "The End of the Game", with Jon Voight, John Sutherland, Robert Shaw, Martin Ritt and Jacqueline Bisset.