- Paperback
- Publisher: Vintage Books; 1st Vintage International Ed edition (31 Dec 1989)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0679722335
- ISBN-13: 978-0679722335
- Product Dimensions: 19.8 x 13.2 x 0.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,610,223 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Review
"The Assignment is a parable of hell for an age consumed by images." - New York Times Book Review "His most ambitious book.... Dark and devious.... Almost obsessively drawn to mankind's most fiendish crimes." - Chicago Tribune "A tour de force.... Mesmerizing." - Village Voice"
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
Product Description
In Friedrich Durrenmatt's experimental thriller "The Assignment", the wife of a psychiatrist has been raped and killed near a desert ruin in North Africa. Her husband hires a woman named F. to reconstruct the unsolved crime in a documentary film. F. is soon thrust into a paranoid world of international espionage where everyone is watched - including the watchers. After discovering a recent photograph of the supposed murder victim happily reunited with her husband, F. becomes trapped in an apocalyptic landscape riddled with political intrigue, crimes of mistaken identity, and terrorism.F.'s labyrinthine quest for the truth is Durrenmatt's fictionalized warning against the dangers of a technologically advanced society that turns everyday life into one of constant scrutiny. Joel Agee's elegant translation will introduce a generation of English-speaking readers to a master of language, suspense, and dystopia.
--This text refers to an alternate
Paperback
edition.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
I came across this short novel by chance. I found the writing style very strange - each chapter is a whole sentence, sometimes running into several pages. It tells the story of a documentary film-maker, a woman known as F, who is hired by a psychiatrist to investigate the rape and murder of his runaway wife in North Africa.
She finds herself in a Kafkaesque and dystopian world of espionage, treachery, danger and violence. Initially I didn't think I would enjoy the author's style, but I found the very long sentences add to the air of menace and growing panic, as F, in the hands of a crazed captor, is pursued into the desert.
Written in 1986, it is an interesting thriller, and the author's dark vision of a future governed by technology.
She finds herself in a Kafkaesque and dystopian world of espionage, treachery, danger and violence. Initially I didn't think I would enjoy the author's style, but I found the very long sentences add to the air of menace and growing panic, as F, in the hands of a crazed captor, is pursued into the desert.
Written in 1986, it is an interesting thriller, and the author's dark vision of a future governed by technology.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4 reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
It's like jumping into ice water. Not bedtime reading.
1 Nov 2000
Format: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
A master spider weaves his web.
5 Nov 1998
Format: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.
An interesting experiment
25 Nov 2010
Format: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.
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.
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