The Assignment

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.