Oh man! Again about a great book I had to read for school.
But now don't think that we just read good books in school... just "Michael Kohlhaas" proves the opposite (I really do hate Kohlhaas and am so looking forward to next wednesday when we finally are done with him after a quarter of a year!).

Well, comming back to the subject of Dürrenmatt. He's a writer who I really like. I read "The Physicians" (twice in a single afternoon) then I listened to "The Mission of the Vega" and now I had to read for my German class "Der Verdacht" ("The Quarry" or "Suspicion"). The other class is reading "The Visit" ("Der Besuch der alten Dame").

Well, I have to admit that the begin was a bit stressful, because there's not much action, because the protagonist (Bärlach, a "Kommissär" what means something like a superintendent) is just lying in his bed in the hospital in Bern and talks to his doctor. The conversations are about a picture of an SS Doctor who operated without narcosis and that Hungertobel (Bärlach's doctor) mistakes this SS doctor called Nehle for his former fellow student Emmenberger (who , however, seemed to be in Chile in those days). And so Bärlach thinks, that Hungertobel is not making a mistake but that it was Emmenberger's case-hardened plan.
But it doens't take too long until there's more action.

And so Bärlach gets in enourmus danger by his own will and is shortly before being killed, when something the reader doesn't see comming happens.

This novel is really like Dürrenmatt. He's as sarcastic or just funny as always and simultaneously very dark and gloomy.
Funny e.g. when Bärlach receives a visit by a creepy guy calling himself Gulliver in the middle of the night. He drinks two bottles of Vodka with him and interrogates him in the case Nehle, because Gulliver is a Jew and had been in several concentration camps, also in Stutthof where Nehle had been. One can imagine how drunk Bärlach must be when he starts singing the Bernese March veery loud. On the next noon Hungertobel comes to him and says, that there's no other possibility than that Bärlach was alcohol intoxicated, but that that's impossible. And in the doctor's naive bewilderness lies the funny thing. Oh I have laughed so much!
And dark, when Bärlach talks to Emmenberger, lying in such an unfriendly absolutely sterile room and Emmenberger tells him about his philosophy and shows him what he's going to do with Bärlach.
And during the second half of the book it's nearly impossible to put it away.

Sooo~ if this book's available in your language (or in English, I don't know if it is) go and read it!
And the Physicians also. Einstein and Newton are so cool!

Er, yes. Didn't planned this to come out so long, but it's such a great novel by such a great writer.