In the vast corpus of Max Frisch, the most celebrated Swiss writer of the twentieth century, Mein Name sei Gantenbein [A Wilderness of Mirrors, 1964] is one of only two texts subtitled “Roman” or “novel” by the author. Gantenbein continues to explore the uneasy fascination with problems of personal identity characteristic of much of this corpus in general, and radically extends the device of the unreliable narrator introduced in the earlier novel Stiller [I’m not Stiller, 1954]. Together with its counterpart for the stage, Biografie: Ein Spiel [Biography: A Game, 1967], Gantenbein marks the outer limit of Frisch’s formal experimentation with conventional genres. The novel’s reception by critics and the general public remains accordingly mixed, but the audacity of its architecture and the technical virtuosity of its execution have made...
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Citation: Ricker-Abderhalden, Judith. "Mein Name sei Gantenbein". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 20 January 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13983, accessed 14 December 2025.]
