Persistent though it may be … the view that the dramatist Frisch is the essential Frisch is, I think, wrong. For one thing, it can be demonstrated—though I do not propose to do so here—that the things which most often claim Frisch's attention are matters better suited to the private world of the introspective novel than to the social world of the stage. Andorra is, of course, an exception. Of more obvious importance is the simple fact that, aside from Andorra and Biedermann und die Brandstifter, Frisch has not written a new play since the early fifties. He has rewritten and revised his earlier dramas, but the mature Frisch has turned increasingly to prose fiction; and in Stiller, Homo faber, and Mein Name sei Gantenbein he has created three of the most important novels of the past decade. Taken together, these books are perhaps the most meaningful...