Max Frisch
"I'm Not Stiller" started with a print-run that provided for sales of 3,000 in its first year, but thanks to strong and growing reader demand it later became the first book published by Suhrkamp to top one million copies. The next novel, "Homo Faber", was another best seller, with four million copies of the German language version produced by 1998. "The Fire Raisers" and "Andorra" are the most successful German language plays of all time, with respectively 250 and 230 productions up till 1996, according to an estimate made by the literary critic Volker Hage. The two plays, along with "Homo Faber" became curriculum favourites with schools in the German-speaking middle European countries. Apart from a few early works, most of Frisch's books and plays have been translated into around ten languages, while the most translated of all, "Homo Faber", has been translated into twenty-five languages.
Max Frisch
Frisch described himself as a socialist but never joined the political party. His early works were almost entirely apolitical. In the "Blätter aus dem Brotsack" (""diaries of military life"") published in 1940, he comes across as a conventional Swiss patriot, reflecting the unifying impact on Swiss society of the perceived invasion risk then emanating from Germany. After Victory in Europe Day the threat to Swiss values and to the independence of the Swiss state diminished. Frisch now underwent a rapid transformation, evincing a committed political consciousness. In particular, he became highly critical of attempts to divide cultural values from politics, noting in his "Diary 1946–1949": "He who does not engage with politics is already a partisan of the political outcome that he wishes to preserve, because he is serving the ruling party" Sonja Rüegg, writing in 1998, says that Frisch's aesthetics are driven by a fundamentally anti-ideological and critical animus, formed from a recognition of the writer's status as an outsider within society. That generates opposition to the ruling order, the privileging of individual partisanship over activity on behalf of a social class, and an emphasis on asking questions.