Friedrich Dürrenmatt

Friedrich Dürrenmatt was born on 5 January 1921 in Switzerland and built his career on the belief that epic theatre could process what the war had just done to Europe. His plays carried that recent violence in their bones, while his crime novels asked questions most thrillers ignored. He wrote avant-garde dramas and macabre satire with equal appetite, politically active and unafraid of the grotesque. A member of the Gruppe Olten, he met regularly with other left-wing Swiss writers at a restaurant in the city of Olten. He died on 14 December 1990, leaving work that refused comfort.