Der Mensch erscheint im Holozän [Man in the Holocene, 1979] the penultimate text by the twentieth-century Swiss dramatist and novelist Max Frisch, is at the same time his most radical experiment with narrative prose and a return to straightforward narration. Readers intrigued by the intimate “autobiographical” dimension of Montauk (1975, q.v.), with its May-December dalliance with a young American woman, its guilty references to past relationships, its acknowledgement of impotence, may at first be underwhelmed by a story about an elderly widower coping with a soggy week in late spring when his Swiss-Italian village is cut off …
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