Friedrich Dürrenmatt
September 22, 1985
POSTSCRIPT
The Execution of Justice was begun in 1957. I planned to complete the novel in a few months. But then came the interruption of work on Frank the Fifth, and The Execution of Justice was put aside. Later attempts to take it up again failed, the last in 1980, when the intention was to make it the thirtieth volume in my collected works. But I could get nowhere with the development of the plot, had no notion of how I had once planned it. In the spring of 1985, Daniel Keel suggested that The Execution of Justice be published as a fragment. I reluctantly consented and then decided I would write one central chapter, but then began to rewrite the whole novel and to complete it, probably in a different way from what I had originally planned. Finally, my thanks to Charlotte Kerr, my wife. I am grateful to her for important dramaturgic pointers and for her constant critical attention to my writing.
Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt was one of the most highly regarded German-language novelists and dramatists of the twentieth century, and his works have been translated into 49 languages. As a dramatist he wrote plays that reflected the mood of a war-scarred Europe. As a novelist, he is famed for his philosophical crime thrillers, which draw comparisons to the works of Paul Auster and Umberto Eco for their postmodern questioning of the conventions of the genre.
Dürrenmatt thought detective novels should reflect the absurdity of real life rather than proceeding like mathematical equations with a definite solution. Of the traditional crime writers, he once said, “You set up your stories logically, like a chess game: all the detective needs to know is the rules, he replays the moves of the game, and checkmate, the criminal is caught and justice has triumphed. This fantasy drives me crazy.”
Dürrenmatt’s most famous novel, The Pledge, was initially written as a screenplay titled Es geschah am hellichten Tag (It Happened in Broad Daylight). The film producers compelled Dürrenmatt to bring this original to a neat conclusion that they felt was more suitable for the screen. The decidedly un-neat conclusion of the subsequent novel, and the subtitle Requiem for the Detective Novel, reflect Dürrenmatt’s deep dislike of such formulaic and predictable plot constructions. Ironically, this book went on to spawn two successful movies, including a 2001 film starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn.
Copyright
Pushkin Press
71–75 Shelton Street
London, WC2H 9JQ
Original text © 1985, Diogenes Verlag, Zurich
English translation © 1989 by John E. Woods
The Execution of Justice was first published as Justiz in Zurich, 1985
First published by Pushkin Press in 2018
ISBN 13: 978 1 782274 09 4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Pushkin Press
www.pushkinpress.com
Find out more at www.pushkinpress.com
The Execution of Justice Page 18