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
With the outbreak of war in 1939, he joined the army as a gunner. Although Swiss neutrality meant that army membership was not a full-time occupation, the country mobilised to be ready to resist a German invasion, and by 1945 Frisch had clocked up 650 days of active service. He also returned to writing. 1939 saw the publication of "From a Soldier's Diary" ("Aus dem Tagebuch eines Soldaten"), which initially appeared in the monthly journal, "". In 1940 the same writings were compiled into the book "Pages from the Bread-bag" ("Blätter aus dem Brotsack"). The book was broadly uncritical of Swiss military life, and of Switzerland's position in war-time Europe, attitudes that Frisch revisited and revised in his 1974 "" ("Dienstbuechlein"); by 1974 he felt strongly that his country had been too ready to accommodate the interests of Nazi Germany during the war years.