The Assignment, or, On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers

by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Joel Agee (Translator)

Otto von Lambert's wife is found dead. He urges F to undertake an assignement to reconstruct the murder. F is fascinated by Otto's notes and by the discovery that Tina had kept an eerie journal on her psychiatrist husband and finds herself involved in a web of murder and international intrigue.

Genres: Fiction, German Literature, Crime, Classics, Novella, Mystery, Thriller

129 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921 – 1990) was a Swiss author and dramatist.

Dürrenmatt was born in the Emmental (canton of Bern), the son of a Protestant pastor. His grandfather Ulrich Dürrenmatt was a conservative politician. The family moved to Bern in 1935. Dürrenmatt began to study philosophy and German language and literature at the University of Zurich in 1941, but moved to the University of Bern after one semester. In 1943 he decided to become an author and dramatist and dropped his academic career. In 1945-46, he wrote his first play, "It is written". On October 11 1946 he married actress Lotti Geissler. She died in 1983 and Dürrenmatt was married again to another actress, Charlotte Kerr, the following year.

He was a proponent of epic theater whose plays reflected the recent experiences of World War II. The politically active author gained fame largely due to his avant-garde dramas, philosophically deep crime novels, and often macabre satire. One of his leading sentences was: "A story is not finished, until it has taken the worst turn". Dürrenmatt was a member of the Gruppe Olten.

Reviews

[Jim Fonseca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book's subtitle tells us right upfront what to expect: "On the Observing of the Observer of the Observers.



The wife of an elderly German psychoanalyst is killed at a religious shrine in North Africa. With no progress being made by the official investigation, and unable to travel himself, the husband hires a female documentary producer to travel there and investigate.

Her trip turns into a surreal, nightmarish journey. Everyone is being watched or followed by someone else. And perhaps the wife's disappearance is related to her own husband's intense psychological observation of her. Her last journal entry was "I am being watched." The camera crew is itself followed and filmed by local news crew. So our theme is like a picture within a picture within a picture; nested dolls of levels of observation.



The author was prescient to write this back in 1986, a bit before the ubiquitous computer cameras and surveillance video technology we are surrounded by today. The book, translated from the German, consists of 24 short chapters each of which is a single run-on sentence. Different, but it works, and it is fast-paced enough to keep your attention.

A few gems: "...an eccentric and sharp-witted man of whom no one could tell whether he was unfit for life or merely pretended to be helpless..."

"...she experienced with certainty that freedom was the trap into which she was expected to flee..."

"...real education consisted of knowing how to get ahead in the world by using the world one wants to get ahead in..."

The plot is resolved in a surreal military testing ground where satellites are watching planes watching tanks watching... We get an essay on the video-game nature of modern warfare where the person pushing the button on the bomb or the drone is disconnected from the impact of his actions.



While the book is reasonably fast-paced, it's not necessarily a fun read; a bit more like something you have to read for a graduate course in sociology.

photos from top:
thecoli.com
habitatmag.com
greencloudhosting.co.uk

[Emmanuel Kostakis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The observing of The observer of The observers: Snapshots of crystallized realities in world spinning back to its origins. Enemies are abstract and the reality is staged.

Friedrich Dürrenmatt experiment thriller (based on the uncompleted novel by Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann) left me flabbergasted and bemused. The thematic array of the novel swiftly moves back and forth, from philosophical theatrics to power struggle and political domination, from surveillance and espionage to the technological dread of the future.

An outburst of words targeting anyone that can be receptive to dystopic, surreal, unnerving, metaphysical , post-modern storylines. The fast passed narrative exhumed tension, anxiety and fear. A nightmarish journey into a bizarre Kafkaesque philosophical labyrinth.

“She felt as helpless as a spider falling into an empty space…freedom was the trap into which she was expected to flee…”

Not a comfortable read but kept me puzzled and guessing till the “contentious” finale. Interesting, challenging but definitely not for mass consumption.

“God can only be imagined as being pure observation that itself not observed…”

Humankind is condemned to tragedy by its mere existence (Kierkegaard)

4.25/5

PS. The novel is divided into 24 short chapters, each of which is a single run-on sentence. Dürrenmatt's use of the one-sentence-per-chapter format is inspired by Glenn Gould's performance of the first half of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier I, which is itself a work in 24 movements.

[BlackOxford · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mystery of Representation

Look at any word long enough and it becomes absurd. Such a recognition isn’t illusion but appreciation. Words are absurd. When we consider them as what they really are, it is clear that they are merely arbitrary sounds or signs on paper, often ugly and grotesque in their presumptuous arrogance of an independent existence.

And if for words, why not the users of words, the speakers and writers who treat others, or even themselves, as if they were the words used about them? Are not they absurd as well?

It is so easy to become the words used about us when they are used again and again, and with relentlessly refined precision. As F, the investigator and documentary film-maker hired to determine the reason for a murder, recognises. The professional notes keep on the murder-victim by her psychiatrist husband “weren’t observations at all but literally an abstracting of her humanity.” The victim is portrayed inhumanely by her closest relation. Those described thus become ugly and offensive regardless of the intentions of the describer. The words extract the existence from their target, which is literally observed to death.

This is the theme - if there is one, who can be certain of anything with this story? - of Durrenmatt’s Assignment: How we destroy existence with words. Not just the personal existence of other people, but the existence of whole cultures. Words, no matter how precisely they are employed, inevitably create a stereotype, a widely held but fixed and oversimplified image or idea of a particular type of person or thing, a part that masquerades as a whole.

This is the formal definition of heresy. Heresy easily becomes prejudice, especially when we are unacquainted with the person or thing in question (but even sometimes when we know them intimately). Our responses are to words not to other human beings. It is from this absurd connection between words and things that Durrenmatt creates his ‘mystery’, not a who-dunnit but a what-happened, or more accurately is-anything-in-this-story-to-be-taken-at-face-value.

“The meaning of existence is existence, which insight, once accepted and affirmed, makes existence unbearable.” A psychological insight like this one can create a psychological illness. In Tina’s, the apparent victim’s, case the result is severe depression, brought about by her husband’s observation of not only her behaviour but her own words written in her private journal and intruded upon by him. This is the ultimate iatrogenic risk for a psychiatrist’s wife. And the ultimate crime for a psychiatrist, even if there is nothing to prosecute.

But the situation is actually more complicated. Observers provoke observation of themselves. The wife notices her husband’s ‘objective’ attention and responds in kind. Through observation of his various quirks and idiosyncrasies, she grows to hate him. So too, F muses, might the Gaia of the planet observe its objectification and respond to its human inhabitants. Observers too, therefore, are turned into words, numbers, signs.

So what ethics should apply? Unobserved men and women do not exist. Nor can they. There is no such animal as a human being without his fellow, who watches, anticipates, measures, values and responds to him, most frequently using words. Even a person who is totally alone reflects on himself. A quandary therefore. Is the psychiatrist (or his wife) guilty of bad observational technique or of simply being human? The mystery looms larger still.

And it’s not just words which are problematic. Art, particularly visual art, has all the same issues as language. It claims to represent. What exactly? The ‘object’ of art is as illusive as the denotation of a word. A painting can be as pejorative as a rumour. Even more so since the artist can claim interpretive license. Tina had an artist listed in her journal. Did he have something to contribute to her death?

Arriving in North Africa, the scene of Tina’s death, F finds her own camera crew being filmed while filming. Yet another problematic mutual observation that affects both parties. The site where Tina’s body was found, an ancient Shi’ite monument, is guarded by dead, rotting, silent ‘saints’ who had protested the place’s excavation and expired in situ. Among these corpses Tina’s body had been discovered, half consumed by the local wildlife. The monument itself is perhaps the ultimate cipher, a huge black cube of polished stone, mostly buried in the sand.

The presence of the observing camera crew of course provokes the local police into a transvestite investigation of their own in which various suspects, or rather their testimony, are presented. One is shot. He was, after all, nothing more than his confession, coerced or not. Unfortunately all the documentary footage mysteriously disappears. But would its recording of the statements of prisoners have made any difference? To whom? The story is that Tina’s murder was revenge by someone’s security service for her husband’s soft stand on terrorism. Why not, it’s a good story.

F persists. She finds a clue, a coat that looks like Tina’s. Is a found clue more authentic than a word, or a portrait, or a confession? She is drawn into a conspiracy with some of the locals, in which she is replaced by a ‘double’. She becomes in other words her own representation. She is unaccountably mistaken for Tina because she wears her coat. She becomes yet another representation.

Her co-conspirator provides ‘testimony’ that the murder victim wasn’t Tina after all. She is alive and with her husband according to the gossip magazines. More symbolic representations of ‘reality’. But yet another corpse is certainly real, the cameraman who mistook F for the dead woman - either Tina or her surrogate is unclear. Yet another cameraman is assigned to F by her conspiring friend. Named Polypheme - literally: abounding in tales and legends - he is nothing but a representation of things not himself.

Polypheme leads her to a sophisticated, underground desert hideout. The place is a virtual warehouse of film and photographs. Stills cover the walls, rolls of film are strewn about the floors. Polypheme, true to his name, tells F a long complicated tale of his background and reasons for his trajectory from the Bronx to North Africa. This tale may have meaning, but it has nothing to do with the history or identity of Polypheme.

The desert hideout, F learns from Polypheme, is in fact an observational bunker to monitor nuclear armament developments globally, using mainly satellites to observe the world, and other satellites to observe the observing satellites. Abandoned now except for Polypheme, the bunker is now the possible target of nuclear weapons. Explosions can be heard intermittently somewhere outside.

Their bunker-chat becomes theological: “If God we’re a pure observer, could he remain unsullied in the observation of his creation?” And if not God, then what about a lowly human cameraman? The discussion turns, appropriately for a Swiss author, Barthian: “... a god who was observed is no longer a god, God was not subject to observation, God’s freedom consisted in being a concealed, hidden god, while man’s bondage consisted of being observed... “ This bondage has become more oppressive as it is not people but now machines, computers, that do the observing. These computers were “gods watching each other.”

Polypheme it turns out has film of the murder because he arranged it using his insane ex-Vietnam American pilot-friend as the instrument. The victim wasn’t Tina but a Danish journalist who used her passport. She resembles F, not just in appearance but also in her obsessive but fruitless search for truth. Trying to get past representations is a dangerous business. Indeed Polypheme has the same motiveless intention for F as he did for his previous victim. But at the last moment she is saved by a police-chief-ex-machina. Polypheme and numerous others get it on film.

Reversing my opening remark: Perhaps if one looks long enough at the absurd, it develops coherent meaning. This is, after all, the fundamental principle of Kabbalah (See for example: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...). I can only hope that such meaning emerges for me at some point from this rather chaotic ride through semiotics. Durrematt makes Umberto Eco look like a slouch when it comes to opaque complexity. The Assignment is not for the weak or faint-hearted.

[Matteo Fumagalli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Il più ostico tra i Dürrenmatt che ho letto.
Un noir classico solo nel primo capitolo, poi diventa tutt'altro. Una storia scura, ingarbugliata, infarcita di mitologia e sprazzi surreali. Facile perdere il filo, ancor più facile lasciarsi incantare da una prosa che è un vero e proprio prodigio.

[Cosimo · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Lei voleva andare nel deserto perché cercava un nuovo ruolo, il suo vecchio ruolo era stato quello di un'osservatrice di ruoli; ora lei si proponeva di tentare il contrario, non di fare un ritratto, il che presupponeva un oggetto, bensì di ricostruire, di fabbricare l'oggetto del suo ritratto per poter creare un cumulo di fronde con foglie singole sparse attorno, ma non poteva sapere se le foglie che lei accumulava erano anche affini, anzi, se alla fin fine non stesse ritraendo se stessa, un'impresa che in realtà era folle, ma d'altra parte talmente folle da non essere folle, e le augurò tutta la fortuna possibile”.

Il racconto di Durrenmatt emerge lentamente in un paesaggio lunare: la storia non viene messa in scena, ma resa visibile. Le scelte narrative descrivono la molteplicità del reale e colgono la riproducibilità all'infinito di ogni irriducibile singola esperienza. In un giallo metafisico dove avvengono casuali scomparse, la morte che sta al centro della storia è soggettiva, riconosciuta e poi smentita e infine resta inspiegabile, non enumerabile, indecifrabile. I personaggi si muovono disperati e smarriti come tracce nel deserto, prigionieri del tempo, in caduta libera in un vortice di astrazioni e delitti. Noi lettori non possiamo gettare lo sguardo altrove, oltre la nostra percezione, siamo dentro un labirinto di limitatezza, ogni nostro gesto è condannato alla ripetizione. Mentre veniamo presi nel circuito cacciatore cacciato, nella rete osservatore osservato, l'idea di poter vivere in prima persona, di essere protagonisti della nostra vita, si rivela una pura illusione, una finzione necessaria, un'inevitabile menzogna. Spaventati dall'oscurità, abbiamo armato la terra e ora l'oscurità ci osserva, come l'ombra del nostro corpo sconfitto, l'immagine riflessa delle nostre paure più profonde e della nostra invincibile ira.

“Era uno Dio caduto, il suo posto l'aveva preso un computer osservato da un altro computer, un Dio osservava l'altro, il mondo ruotava verso la propria origine”.

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really loved this metaphysical spy novel, which feels like the sort of thing that might have been written by someone who was locked in a cell with a paperback thriller for a space of years: the elements of espionage are there, the menace, the surveillance, the ill-defined mission that changes shape over time, the weaponry, the Middle East. Yet you know right away that something is different, first in the format: the novel consists of 24 ‘chapters,’ each of which is a single sentence, some stretching for several pages (it would be really interesting to try to diagram one of these babies), that read aloud (yeh, I sometimes read aloud) like a digressive ramble, and read silently in an irresistible rush and tumble of words. Then there is the opening image, as the Psychologist Otto von Lambert has the brutalized corpse of his wife flown home for burial in a coffin suspended from the bottom of the aircraft where it sails along over the ocean and the Alps, the first of many weird, surreal images that catch the reader by surprise throughout the story. F, a filmmaker interested in documenting the whole wide world, takes on the job of investigating the death, and consults with D, a logician who shares his own spin on Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle – or is it the observer effect - derived through viewing through a telescope how others respond to realizing they are being viewed. (eg. they throw rocks at him) F then proceeds in her strange, unsettling journey that I won’t attempt to summarize, but that leads her to a desert bunker where she encounters the illusory nature of freedom – the biggest trap of all - and the idea of God not as the unmoved mover, but as the unwatched watcher, pure observation. If all this seems insufferably theoretical to you, the author’s method really keeps the tension alive even as the author teases out existential riddles and curious features of human (self) awareness in an age of spy satellites and watchful unease. While a lot of other philosophical mysteries play around the edges of ideas, this book charges right into the heart of Mystery, with enjoyable results.

[Aylin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Farklı başlıklar altındaki felsefi düşüncelerin virgül ile ayrılmış sonu gelmeyen cümleler ile ard arda sıralanarak karakterlerin birbirlerine kurdukları cümlelerin içine yedirildiği ve polisiye bir kurgu ile bütünlüğe kavuşturulduğu bambaşka bir kitap bu.

Yazar bunların tamamını gözlemleme ve gözlemlenme kavramlarının gerekliliği ve sürekliliği üzerinden okumuş.

Depresyona, terrorist eylemlere, benlik ve mantık kavramlarına, tanrıya ve hatta sinema oyunculuğuna kadar uzanan geniş bir skalada yer alan pek çok saptama yer alıyor.

Buraya kadar yazdıklarım sadece ilk 20 sayfa ile ilgili. Kitabın başlarındaki kavramsal yoğun anlatı polisiye maceranın başlaması ile birlikte daha akıcı bir şekle giriyor. Bununla birlikte kitap eleştirel bir metne dönüşüyor.

Sadece ilk 20 sayfası için bile okunacak bir kitap bence. Çevirisi de ayrı bir alkışı hak ediyor…

[Aslı Can]

Zekice kurgulanmış ve üslubu çok hoş.

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This experimental thriller largely lives up to its unlikely billing, reading like an international spy yarn that's been reworked by Paul Bowles then directed by David Lynch. It presents an astounding pile-up of doppelgangers, refracted identities, shifting landscapes, and simmering horror. It's arranged in short chapters that are one sentence each, adding to the novel's breathless pace. But then there's the ending. Instead of committing to the story's radical displacements, Durrenmatt serves up mundane explanations for the plot's oddities and beats you over the head with his philosophical themes. Overall, though, it's well worth a read. Here are the tantalizing opening lines: "When Otto van Lambert was informed by the police that his wife Tina had been found dead and violated at the foot of the Al-Hakim ruin, and that the crime was as yet unsolved, the psychiatrist, well known for his book on terrorism, had the corpse transported by helicopter across the Mediterranean, suspended in its coffin by ropes...."

[Banu Yıldıran Genç · Rating 4 out of 5]

dürrenmatt çok acayip kitaplar yazmış ve dönemine göre oldukça erken bir biçimde yapmış bunu.
felsefeden tutun da dünya silahlanmasına, küresel güçlere kadar değinilen bu novella’da her bölüm bir cümleden oluşuyor ve çevirmen mustafa tüzel bunu çok iyi bir biçimde becermiş.

[Siti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Presso le rovine di Al-Hakim è stato rinvenuto il cadavere di Tina, moglie dello psichiatra Otto von Lambert, autore di un libro sul terrorismo islamico; recuperatolo e trasferitolo per le esequie inusuali e spettacolari tramite un volo aereo in elicottero, il luminare, assalito dai sensi di colpa, ingaggia una reporter affinché sveli il mistero della violenza subita dalla moglie e dei motivi del suo omicidio. In ventiquattro brevi paragrafi, tutti sintatticamente risolti in un periodo della lunghezza variabile compresa tra due e sei pagine con un unico punto fermo, consiste la novella e, se vi dicessi che mi sono resa conto della mancanza di punteggiatura solo a metà libro, sono sicura che renderei l’idea della perfezione stilistica di questa prosa che può fare a meno della classica suddivisione di un testo in frasi.
La F., che aveva filmato, tra tanti, l’evento delle improbabili esequie, accetta l’incarico e dopo essersi rivolta al logico D., il quale esterna le sue elucubrazioni “sull’osservare di chi osserva gli osservatori” parte alla volta del Marocco. In questo contesto avvelenato dall’eterno conflitto tra due centri del potere, ci si perde nel giallo della ricerca, nel nero degli eventi macabri che vengono narrati e rappresentati e filmati, nel grigio alluminio di un’allucinata e allucinante distopia, nel colore che non so attribuire del surreale, per me potrebbe essere il blu giustapposto al giallo del noto quadro di Van Gogh “Notte stellata”. Tanti stili, tanti rivoli di moduli letterari da inseguire fino all’epilogo a sorpresa, ultimo atto della destabilizzante esperienza di lettura offertarci. Geniale, sicuramento. Bello? Piacevole? Per me no, ma ciò ricade nella personale sfera del lettore, non sono il suo lettore ideale in questo caso, gli devo senz’altro il richiamo a un suo illustre anticipatore che, ne “I quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore” tante intuizioni, qui ritrovate, aveva anticipato. A voi scoprirle…

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

When a 129 pg novel becomes a slog, you know you got big problems. I stuck with it only because of its numerical brevity, but stopped caring long before the end. A certain energy in the rambling, run-on prose kept me going, though how style contributes to themes of book escape me. the characters all struck me as mere mouth-pieces for D's riffs on power and corruption and ultimately impenetrable nature of observation (I think that's what it was about, anyway) and how all that contributes to repressive regimes; not a sweat-bead of complex humanity among the lot of them. The themes seemed like warmed-over DeLillo, though, to be fair, FD wrote this in '88 before DD's vision of same, based on my admittedly incomplete reading of him, fully emerged -- so maybe Don is doing warmed-over Fred? If so, he still does it through better stories, or, more importantly, better style. Don's characters, like in Mao II can leave me cold, too, but not bored like Fred's characters did. A shame, really, because I thought the novel started out with some promise, but flattened our pretty quickly. I suppose there's deeper stuff at work here than I'm giving credit for, but nothing in FD's writing made me care enough to slow down and ponder it. About halfway through, I found myself thinking that I'd rather read a highly rigorous essay on this material than a stilted philosophical novel.

[S̶e̶a̶n̶ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read a lot of short novels and rarely do I find myself wishing they were longer or more substantial. But this book felt too short. And I would actually call this one a novella, although not simply due to word count. It would be a stretch to call this a novel for a number of reasons. It's stripped down to a borderline shortage of the essentials—to the detriment of the reading experience. There is so little character development. The plot moves so fast one is left wanting. Not that there weren't parts that I got caught up in but they passed by so quickly that I found myself simply shrugging as I was carried along rather than pausing to wonder about the possibilities. Then there is Dürrenmatt's heavy-handed and simplistic treatment of his themes. At times it feels like he's swinging a hammer instead of telling a story. Lastly, the choice to write each chapter as a single sentence felt too much like a stylistic affectation. It was not burdensome to read but it felt unnecessary. The story had so much potential but did not expand enough to reach it.

[Nicole Hardina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an interesting piece of fiction. Crafted as it was upon the stylistic precedent of Bach's twenty-four movement piece, "The Well-Tempered Clavier," it seems at once metafiction and the avoidance of everything meta.

Like formally strict poetry, this piece opens as one realizes how much the author accomplished within his self-imposed confines. It is both flourishing and reductive at once, suggesting both that multiple characters and situations can be described in multiple tenses, that multiple tensions, too, can be developed, all in a single sentence--as well as that all good fiction needs are details and commas.

[Fiore Manni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Un po’ ostico, storia difficile da seguire ma scritto come al solito benissimo. Non il più bello di Dürrenmatt ma sono comunque contenta di averlo letto!

[Nate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review #2 of "Year of the Review All Read Books"

Proposal: The reader is doing the titular "observing." The author is the observer who observes the characters--it is revealed by the text that all the characters are in some way observers themselves (camera crews, government officials, amateur filmmakers).

Juvenal is the first recorded person (that I know of) to coin the sentiment "Quis custodiet ipsos custodet" Who watches the watchers? In Durrenmat's The Assignment, this task falls to everyone. Everyone is both observed and observing. As one character, D., the logician, argues, this is how one proves they exist. For this reason the book is dependent on technology as part of the natural world. Readers of Don DeLillo will feel at home--as at home as a person can feel in a Don DeLillo book that is. Durrenmat proves that Technology engenders its own odd unique ideologies and dogmas.

The world exists both within and without of our own. The country is unnamed, but it is vaguely in the Middle East. There exist some technological and cultural oddities more for the sake of being odd and strange and new-fangled than for documentarian sake. But this is why it's fiction.

There are twenty four chapters and twenty four sentences in this book. Having taken only two years of German I don't know much about the language in any nuanced way, but I can tell you those Germans sure do love their commas. Translated, many of the sentences become excessive to the English reader and this is simply due to the fact that German sentence structure is different than English. The effect of never taking a full breath at a full stop is that things move very quickly to the reader. Key plot points are in five word clauses with ambiguous antecedents. Above all, one must pay attention to what they are watching. This is the essence of the book.

[Giovanni84 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Un noir alla Durrenmatt, quindi angosciante, filosofico, metafisico, ecc.

La trama è avvincente, anche se abbastanza confusa (e a mio parere a un certo insensata).
Ma la scrittura è pessima, a mio parere. Per motivi che ignoro, il libro è suddiviso in 24 capitoli che sono frasi.
Cioè, ogni capitolo è una lunga frase, in cui sostanzialmente vengono usate le virgole laddove sarebbe più sensato mettere un punto, solo per poter costruire un'unica lunga frase.
Non ha senso scrivere così, rende tutto più confusionario e sinceramente penso che sia una scelta stilistica piuttosto stupida.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A psychiatrist's wife is murdered at the foot of an Islamic temple in an African nation. He hires a filmmaker/journalist to find out the cause of her death. Thus begins a distinctively perverse and astonishingly unpredictable Dürrenmatt tale that ends nowhere near the destination one might anticipate at the beginning. A short book of 24 chapters—actually 24 comma-laden run on sentences—that once again demonstrates how Dürrenmatt could anticipate aspects of the future long before anyone could have conceived of the possible outlines of what might come. Recommended to anyone who is familiar with and enjoys Dürrenmatt's unconventional sense of humor, prescience and unique views of what it means to be criminal.

[Walter · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A parable of hell for an age consumed by images."
Who could resist a blurb like that when you are looking for some good leisure reading?
I couldn’t.


This book was partially inspired by the first 24 movements of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. The book is 24 chapters; each one is only one sentence. This adds a pressure, and for that matter, an intensely beautiful rhythm to the prose, while at the same time, leading the reader to some of the darker caverns of humanity.
What is seen isn’t real, and what is felt is a provocation; thus, what is truly illuminated in this novel is the modern condition.

[AlbertoD · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ventiquattro capitoli, ciascuno formato da un unico periodo: bisogna arrivare alla fine del capitolo per imbattersi nell’unico punto che chiude il periodo; per il resto la gerarchia tra le proposizioni è scandita solo da virgole e punti e virgole. L’effetto è travolgente: il lettore è trascinato da un’incessante corrente di parole, senza soluzione di continuità, in una sorta di spirale vertiginosa: è impossibile staccare gli occhi dalla pagina, a patto di perdere il filo del discorso, e dover ricominciare da capo.
È attraverso questa originale formula narrativa che il geniale scrittore svizzero conduce il lettore in un mondo da incubo, popolato da personaggi grotteschi e surreali; un mondo morboso in cui tutti osservano e al tempo stesso sono osservati da tutti e in cui l’osservazione reciproca è l’unico mezzo attraverso cui dare un senso a se stessi e agli altri (“Sull’osservare di chi osserva gli osservatori” recita il beffardo sottotitolo); una realtà in cui si procede per inerzia e la libertà di scegliere è fonte di angoscia; in cui il concetto stesso di realtà è relativo e assume senso solo attraverso l’obiettivo di una macchina fotografica o di una cinepresa, e in cui l’identità è qualcosa di fluido, mutevole; un mondo distopico i cui deserti sono cimiteri di mezzi bellici e teatri di guerre fittizie in cui sperimentare nuove armi attraverso la maniacale osservazione dei loro effetti.
Una racconto provocatorio, perturbante, dalla sorprendente attualità. Tende a perdersi un po’ nel finale, ma sicuramente consigliato, in particolare a chi conosce già quest’autore e vuole approfondire tematiche meno presenti in altre sue opere.

[WillemC · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aan het begin van deze novelle worden enkele interessante ideeën uitgespit in een stijl die soms Bernhard-fanfictie lijkt, maar eens de narratie op gang komt vervalt alles in een postmoderne soep die tegelijk gedateerd en actueel aanvoelt: we worden allemaal geobserveerd en gefilmd en die observators en filmers worden ook geobserveerd en gefilmd en die ... Je snapt het wel.

"[...] de mens probeerde zich steeds wanhopiger te onttrekken aan het geobserveerd-worden, de staat vond de mens en de mens vond de staat steeds verdachter worden, evenzeer observeerde de staat elke andere en voelde elke staat zich door elke andere staat geobserveerd [...]"

"[...] het is onmogelijk om esthetisch te eten [...]"

[Oto Oltvanji · Rating 5 out of 5]

Krenuo sam da čitam sve što pronađem u prevodu od Fridriha Direnmata, švajcarskog dramskog pisca i prozaiste koji je pisao na nemačkom, uglavnom znanog kao dekonstrukcionista krimića. Postoje brojne ekranizacije njegovih dela, od kojih su najslavnije dve uspešne holivudske, POSETA STARE DAME (The Visit, 1964) Bernharda Vikija s Ingrid Bergman i Entonijem Kvinom, i ZAVET (The Pledge, 2001) Šona Pena sa Džekom Nikolsonom.

NALOG (Der Auftraf, 1986) mu je pozno delo (počeo je da objavljuje još 1947), čiji podnaslov glasi: "O nadziravanju nadzirača nadzirača", a pod-podnaslov: "Novela u dvadeset četiri rečenice". E sad, verovali ili ne, to je upravo to, novela na 90 strana u 24 poglavlja od po jedne rečenice; najduže poglavlje-rečenica ima sedam strana, najkraće pola strane. Taj neobičan pripovedni postupak više je od puke stilske vežbe, savršeno u skladu sa sadržajem dela, koje započinje intrigantno, ali relativno skromno – imućni psihijatar Oto fon Lambert angažuje režiserku dokumentaraca F. da rasvetli silovanje i ubistvo svoje supruge Tine fon Lambert u neimenovanoj severnoafričkoj državi – da bi vremenom preraslo u nešto što bi se dalo opisati kao, uh, filozofsko-paranoični triler epskih razmera, nalik kakvom egzotičnom Kafki…. ma ne smem dalje ni da vam pričam. Na skučenom prostoru desi se toliko toga, nikad zagušeno niti zbrzano a sve vreme iznenađujuće, i na kraju se sve lepo zaokruži. I, eto, da me samo vidite: iskežen, osvežen, inspirisan.

[okumadan_olmaz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gözlemcileri Gözlemleyenin Gözlemi, adından da anlaşıldığı gibi gözlem teması üzerine yazılmış ve okuyucuyu bir labirentin içerisine hapseden enteresan bir suç/polisiye romanı aslında.
Yazarın, 24 bölümden oluşan her bölümü bir cümle olarak yazmayı tercih etmesinin sebebi, Bach’ın Well Tempered Clavier 1 adlı eserinde 24 adet major ve minor perdeleri kullanarak yaptığı gibi zamanın azaldığı duygusunu ve sıkışmışlık hissini okuyucuya yaşatmakmış.
Kim gözlenen, kim gözlemleyen durumunun sorgulandığı, bir gözlenen varsa bir gözlemleyenin de var olduğu durumu üzerinden insan davranışlarının ne kadar doğal olabileceğini sorgulatan kitap, arka kapak yazısında da söylendiği gibi gerçekten zihin açıcı bir okuma serüveni sunuyor.
Dil olarak beni beklediğim kadar zorlamayan ama anlatmak istediğini biraz dolambaçlı yoldan aktaran kitap, okuyucudan çok şey bekliyor. Bu da zaman zaman ne olup bittiğini kavramanızı biraz etkiliyor. Fakat kitap bittikten sonra özellikle İngilizce kaynaklardan kitap üzerine eleştiri yazılarını okuduğumda taşlar yerine oturdu ve kitabın aslında ne kadar sıradışı olduğunu daha iyi kavradım.
Anlayacağınız bittikten sonra bir kenara koyamacağınız üzerinde biraz vakit geçirmeniz bir kitap Gözlemcileri Gözlemleyenin Gözlemi.
Bu yüzden daha tecrübeli ve dünya edebiyatında farklı lezzetler peşinde koşan okurlara önerebileceğim bir kitap.

[claire zachanassian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gözlemcileri gözlemleyenin gözlemi'ni okuma süreci ilginç ve yorucu bir deneyim oldu.Bana kalırsa her okura hitap etmeyen özel bir ilgi isteyen kitap.
Her ne kadar polisiye türünde geçen bir uzun hikaye olsa da polisiye olarak nitelendirilebilir mi emin değilim. Kurgu ve karakterler klasik polisiyelerden ayrı bir yerde duruyordu. Hevesli okuyucuları engellememek için biraz bahsedecek olursam, Tina'nın katilini aramıyoruz kim olduğuyla ilgilenmiyoruz da. Bizim merak ettiğimiz cinayetin nasıl işlendiği.Von lambert'in F.'den ricasıysa eşi Tina'nın cinayetini yeniden kurması, mesleki kongrelerde ve savcılıkta izlenebilecek bir film yapması. Ve yazar bize tam da bu sırada cinayeti yeniden "gözlemleyebilmek" için kitap boyunca sürecek bir “gözlem hiyerarşisi” kuruyor. Bunu yaparken de dikkatle takip edilecek, alt metni yoğun, polisiyeyi evirip çevirdiği yirmi dört bölüm sunuyor.
Her biri tek cümleden oluşan bu bölümlerde bu kadar külfete giren okuyucuya akıcılığı sağlamak içinse her cümle kısa kelime gruplarıyla ilerlemiş. Hikayenin kısa bölümleriyle birleşince de okudukça hızlanıyorsunuz.
Dürrenmatt'ı okumak kesinlikle değerli bir zaman dilimiydi. Yazını çevirideki emeğiyle anlaşılır kılan Mustafa Tüzel’e de ayrıca teşekkürler.

[V. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no idea why everybody, at least in German-speaking circles, is not discussing this book at this very moment: NSA scandal / espionage / constant monitoring? Check. Drones and their pilots? Check. Technology race in warfare? Check. All to-the-point (it's Dürrenmatt!), poignant, and packed into one of the most interesting (because it works) experimental forms (the novella does indeed consists of exactly 24 sentences - every chapter one sentence) I've read lately. And written in 1986 - so also scarily clear-sighted. Or scary in the insights how things haven't changed or only changed to the worse.

[Mirabilis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eines der unbekannteren Werke Dürrenmatts, allerdings derart virtuos, dass man es bereut, es nicht eher gelesen zu haben. Eine komplette Novelle in 24 Sätzen - ja, das ist möglich, doch dass es bei all den Verschachtelungen an Nebensätzen lesbar bleibt, ist eine echte Kunst. Die Handlung selbst faszinierend, voller unvorhersehbarer Wendungen, dabei grotesk fesselnd. Interessant wäre eine Übertragung des Grundmotivs in den Bereich moderner Überwachungstechnologien - vom Beobachten des Beobachters der Beobachter.

[Maurizio Manco · Rating 4 out of 5]

"... per questo tutti si osservano a vicenda, si scattano fotografie e si filmano, per timore che la propria esistenza sia priva di senso davanti a un universo che si disperde in tutte le direzioni con i suoi miliardi di vie lattee come la nostra, popolato di miliardi e miliardi di pianeti viventi disperatamente isolati per le enormi distanze come il nostro, di fronte a un tutto squarciato di continuo da soli che esplodono e poi si ricondensano, chi altro poteva ancora osservare l'uomo per dargli un senso se non l'individuo stesso ..." (pp. 30, 31)

[Cami · Rating 3 out of 5]

Immer wieder in der letzten Zeit bin ich - vielleicht aus reinem Zufall - auf den Begriff der Unermesslichkeit der Menschlichkeit bei Dürrenmatt gestolpert. Dieser Begriff hat mich so spezifisch angesprochen (obwohl ich das keinem spezifischen Grund zuordnen konnte), dass ich ja ein bisschen tiefer hineinlesen musste.
Die Unermesslichkeit davon, was es bedeutet, Mensch und Identität zu sein, ist was Dürrenmatt durch seiner Poetik immer wieder lieber vorkommt und was er immer wieder gerne erforscht. Jedoch ohne irgendeine beruhigende Antwort dem Leser zu schenken.

In "Der Auftrag" wird genau das in Frage gestellt. Die Protagonistin, die F., findet sich in ein Gewebe internationales Ausmaß verstrickt, wenn sie den Auftrag von Otto von Lambert bekommt, das Rätsel der Tötung von seiner Frau zu lösen. Sie habe die Ruinen einer Wüstenstadt betreten und da sei sie ermordet worden. Die Frage ist nicht von wem, sondern warum.

Durch das Forschen und das Wagen enthüllt die F. eine politische Verschwörung, die nicht auf das Individuum eingeht, sondern tief in die heimische Politik sowie in die Kriegswirtschaft gewurzelt ist. Das Individuum wird zu Wesen, dessen Bedeutung wertlos wird. Der Mensch ist identitätslos und in Anbetracht seines Identitätsverlustes ist er - in dieser unbehaglichen, instabilen Lage - ein Beobachtete.

Das Beobachtungsspiel von Dürrenmatt (auch mit Kameras) dient zum Beweis des Mensch-Seins und zur Totalität der Existenz als etwas Flüchtiges und Sinnlos, wo ein Mord diese blitzschnell auflöst (aber nicht erlöst).

Dürrenmatt scheint vor unserer Zeit die Implikationen der Identitätsbedeutungslosigkeit vor einer "Kameragesellschaft" in konstantem Beobachtungsmodus zu ahnen. Und das durch ihre ungeheuersten Ausdruck: ihre unmoralische Auflösung.

[Marc Nash · Rating 4 out of 5]

Video review https://youtu.be/d9fkTjija4Y

[Irem Tatar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Whatsapp uygulamasında ses kaydedip, birine gönderdiğim an, sanki karşımdaki kişiymişim gibi, kendi sesimi dinlemeye başlıyorum. Başka biriymişim gibi, sesin iniş çıkışlarını, varsa heyecanını ya da tekdüzeliğini anlamaya çalışıyorum. Dinleniyor olmak, kendi dinleme eylemimi de değiştiriyor.

Benzer şekilde, etkilemek istediğim biri, sosyal hesaplarımdan beni takibe başladığında, kendimi/profilimi -profilim de beni temsil etmekten daha fazlası olmuş anlaşılan- başkasıymışım gibi gezmeye başlıyorum. Güzel olduğunu düşündüğüm fotoğraflara eleştiri ile bakıyorum, yazdıklarımı gözden geçirip utanıyorum ya da kendime aferin veriyorum, tüm bu sanal izlerime karşı.

Dürrenmatt'ın 1986'da yazdığı "Gözlemcileri Gözlemleyenin Gözlemi", yazıldıktan 33 yıl sonra, kendi hayatımın - ya da sanal izdüşümlerimin - izleyenin nesnesi iken, izlenme eyleminin bağdaştırılabileceği "önemsenme" hissi ile, aynı zamanda izleme fiilini gerçekleştiren özne olduğumu hatırlatıyor.

Psikiyatrın ölen karısını arayan F.'nin, kendisine çok benzeyen bu kadını fotoğraflarda bulması gibi, izlendikçe izliyor, kendimizi dikizliyor, benliğimizi biçimlendiriyoruz.