Bücher von Michael Frayn

The Tony Awardwinning play that soars at the intersection of science and art, Copenhagen is an explosive re-imagining of the mysterious wartime meeting between two Nobel laureates to discuss the atomic bomb.In 1941 the German physicist Werner Heisenberg made a clandestine trip to Copenhagen to see his Danish counterpart and friend Niels Bohr. Their work together on quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle had revolutionized atomic physics. But now the world had changed and the two men were on opposite sides in a world war. Why Heisenberg went to Copenhagen and what he wanted to say to Bohr are questions that have vexed historians ever since. In Michael Frayns ambitious, fiercely intelligent, and daring new play Heisenberg and Bohr meet once again to discuss the intricacies of physics and to ponder the metaphysicalthe very essence of human motivation.

The story is of one of the most famous investigations ever conducted by science into the mysteries of the world - and its disastrous ending in the even stranger mysteries of the world within.

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and a Washington Post Notable Book of the YearOn the private Greek island of Skios, the high-paying guests of a world-renowned foundation prepare for the annual keynote address, to be given this year by Dr. Norman Wilfred, an aging and ponderous authority on the scientific organization of science. He turns out to be surprisingly youthful and charming, and everyone is soon eating out of his hand.Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, the ravishing Georgie has agreed to spend a furtive horizontal weekend with a notorious schemer, who has characteristically failed to turn up. Trapped there with her instead is a pompous, balding individual called Dr. Norman Wilfred, who has lost his whereabouts, his luggage, and his temper-indeed, everything he possesses other than the text of a lecture on the scientific organization of science.In a spiraling farce about upright academics, ambitious climbers, and dotty philanthropists, Michael Frayn, "the god of farce" (Entertainment Weekly), tells a story of personal and professional disintegration, probing his eternal theme of how we know what we know even as he delivers us to the outer limits of hilarity.

Winner of the PEN/Ackerley PrizeAward-winning playwright and novelist Michael Frayn "makes the family memoir his own" (The Daily Telegraph) as he tells the story of his father, Tom Frayn. A clever lad, an asbestos salesman with a winning smile and a racetrack vocabulary, Tom Frayn emerged undaunted from a childhood spent in two rooms with six other people, all of them deaf. And undaunted he stayed, through German rockets, feckless in-laws, and his own increasing deafness; through the setback of a son as bafflingly slow-witted as the father was quick on his feet; through the shockingly sudden tragedy that darkened his life. As Peter Kemp wrote in The Sunday Times (London), "Frayn has never written with more searching brilliance than in his quest for his past."

Humankind, scientists agree, is a tiny and insignificant anomaly in the vastness of the universe. But what would that universe look like if we were not here to say something about it? In this brilliant, insightful work of philosophy, beloved novelist and playwright Michael Frayn examines the biggest and oldest questions of philosophy, from space and time to relativity and language, and seeks to distinguish our subjective experience from something objectively true and knowable. Underlying all revelations in this wise and affectionately written book is the fundamental question: "If the universe is what we make it, then what are we?"

A brilliant exploration of character and conscience from the author of COPENHAGEN, set amid the tensions of 1960s BerlinIn Democracy, Michael Frayn once again creates out of the known events of twentieth-century history a drama of extraordinary urgency and subtlety, reimagining the interactions and motivations of Willy Brandt as he became chancellor of West Germany in 1966 and those of his political circle, including Günter Guillaume, a functionary who became Brandt's personal assistant-and who was eventually exposed as an East German spy in a discovery that helped force Brandt from office. But what circumstances allowed Brandt to become the first left-wing chancellor in forty years? And why, given his progressive policies, did the East German secret police feel it necessary to plant a spy in his office and risk bringing down his government? Michael Frayn writes in his postscript to the play, "Complexity is what the play is about: the complexity of human arrangements and of human beings themselves, and the difficulties that this creates in both shaping and understanding our actions."

From the bestselling author of Headlong and Spies, "an unconditional triumph" (The Washington Post Book World)For fifteen years, ever since the taciturn civil servant Summerchild fell to his death from a window in the Admiralty, there have been rumors.So Brian Jessel, a young member of the Cabinet Office, is diverted from his routine work and asked to prepare an internal report. Slowly, from the archives in the Cabinet Office Registry, Jessel begins to reconstruct Summerchild's last months. It begins to emerge that, at a time when America had just put men on the moon, the British were involved in an even bolder project, and that Summerchild was investigating a phenomenon as common as sunlight, but as powerful and dangerous as any of the forces that modern science has known.The secret world into which Brian Jessel stumbles turns out to be even more extraordinary than his department had feared.

One day, during the British run of Copenhagen, winner of the Tony Award for best play in 1999, Frayn was presented with a curious package from a London housewife that contained a few faded pages of barely legible German. These pages, apparently found concealed beneath some floorboards, seemed to cast a remarkable new light on the mystery at the heart of the play. While Frayn began to lose all sense of certainty, actor David Burke, who played Niels Bohr in the London production and had some experience with documents of this sort, followed the action with particularly close interest. After the riddle was cracked and the fog had cleared, Frayn and Burke sat down together to ponder the winding trail of the Copenhagen papers.By turns comic and profound, The Copenhagen Papers explores the conundrum at the heart of all Michael Frayn's work--human fallibility and the eternal difficulty of knowing why we do what we do.

He knows everything about her before they meet: the make of pen she writes with, her exact height, the various honorary degrees she holds. He knows more about her nine novels and 27 short stories than she does herself. Naturally-he has devoted his life to studying and teaching them, and he reveres them. Also, he is four times as clever as she is.The Trick of It is a comic and painful voyage of exploration into the creative process and the feelings it arouses in others. The humble academic disciple finds himself admitted to his subject's life, and off to this oldest friend go a series of dispatches-by turns awed and patronizing, reverential and jealous, disingenuous and appallingly frank.

An unlikely con man wagers wife, wealth, and sanity in pursuit of an elusive Old Master.Invited to dinner by the boorish local landowner, Martin Clay, an easily distracted philosopher, and his art-historian wife are asked to assess three dusty paintings blocking the draught from the chimney. But hiding beneath the soot is nothing less-Martin believes-than a lost work by Bruegel. So begins a hilarious trail of lies and concealments, desperate schemes and soaring hopes as Martin, betting all that he owns and much that he doesn't, embarks on a quest to prove his hunch, win his wife over, and separate the painting from its owner. In Headlong, Michael Frayn, "the master of what is seriously funny" (Anthony Burgess), offers a procession of superbly realized characters, from the country squire gone to seed to his giddy, oversexed young wife. All are burdened by human muddle and human cravings; all are searching for a moral compass as they grapple with greed, folly, and desire. And at the heart of the clamor is Breugel's vision, its dark tones warning of the real risks of temptation and obsession.With this new novel, Michael Frayn has given us entertainment of the highest order. Supremely wise and wickedly funny, Headlong elevates Frayn into the front rank of contemporary novelists.

Vertauschte Männer, Manuskripte und MatronenAuf einer Ferieninsel in Griechenland bereiten sich die Gäste einer amerikanischen Stiftung auf die Ankunft des diesjährigen Gastredners vor. Dr. Norman Wilfred, Autorität auf dem Gebiet der Szientometrie, erweist sich als erstaunlich jung und gut aussehend und ist alles andere als ein verknöcherter Gelehrter. Das findet insbesondere Nikki, die attraktive rechte Hand von Mrs. Toppler, der Mäzenin. Als Nikkis leichtsinnige Freundin Georgie am anderen Ende der Insel auf einen kahlen, missmutigen und orientierungslosen Mann namens Dr. Norman Wilfred trift , bricht der nackte Wahnsinn aus. Englischer Humor pur!

Characters: 6 male, 2 female, plus extras (w/doubling)Multiple SetsA man who has everything. Money, friends, a beautifulhome. And then - pfft! It's all vanished. Max Reinhardt,one the greatest impresarios of theatrical history, had alifelong ambition - to dissolve the boundary betweentheatre and the world it portrays. Each year at theSalzburg Festival he directed a famous morality play,Everyman, about God sending Death to summon arepresentative of mankind for judgment. The vict

A collection of short plays Black and SilverCharacters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set In this short, affecting and laughable scene parents are awakened in the middle of the night by the baby. They stumble about trying to pacify the infant. At one point the husband panics because he cannot hear the baby breathing in the cradle, which is only reasonable because the wife has put it on their bed.Mr. FootCharacters: 1 male, 1 female Interior Set A

Owen Shorter, professional journalist, and Mara Hill, well known lady novelist, discover at the beginning of the play that they have been sent to Cuba to write for rival colour supplements.

The National BestsellerThe sudden trace of a disturbing, forgotten aroma compels Stephen Wheatley to return to the site of a dimly remembered but troubling childhood summer in wartime London. As he pieces together his scattered memories, we are brought back to a quiet, suburban street where two boys--Keith and his sidekick, Stephen--are engaged in their own version of the war effort: spying on the neighbors, recording their movements, and ferreting out their secrets. But when Keith utters six shocking words, the boy's game of espionage takes a sinister and unintended turn, transforming a wife's simple errands and the ordinary rituals of family life into the elements of adult catastrophe.Childhood and innocence, secrecy, lies and repressed violence are all gently laid bare as once again Michael Frayn powerfully demonstrates that what appears to be happening in front of our eyes often turns out to be something we cannot see at all.

Terry, an ex-petty-criminal, runs a small charity organization which campaigns for freedom of information. When he is handed a not-to-be-missed case it becomes apparent that everybody in the office has something to hide in this comical drama.

Called the funniest farce ever written, Noises Off presents a manic menagerie as a cast of itinerant actors rehearsing a flop called Nothing's On. Doors slamming, on and offstage intrigue, and an errant herring all figure in the plot of this hilarious and classically comic play. "The play opens with a touring company dress-rehearsing Nothing On, a conventional farce. Mixing mockery and homage, Frayn heaps into this play-within-a-play a hilarious mel¿e of stock characters and situations.

This long-running hit starred Sam Waterston on Broadway as an urban architect whose attempts to improve humanity by the environments he creates, only leads to chaos when the high-rise boom goes bust and two close friends are caught in the cross-hairs.2 women, 2 men

John Garrard is a successful manufacturer who is driven by a compulsion to use and consume the world and the people around him. He is briefly intensely curious about everything he comes across, particularly other people's worlds: their religious beliefs, their sexual and artistic yearnings and their feelings about him. During one climactic night amid the hectic activities of a trade fair in Germany, it looks as if he will be forced to turn his sharp eyes upon himself and come face to face at last with silence and darkness.2 women, 11 men

Set in the library of a provincial newspaper where battle is joined between the forces of order and chaos, between arid organization in the person of the new library assistant, Leslie, and humane confusion in the person of Lucy, the much-loved resident librarian. Drawing on his experience as a journalist, Frayn draws his gallery of characters with the hilarious accuracy which can only come from first-hand experience. Winner of the Evening Standard's Best Comedy Award after a long run at the Hampstead Theatre and on London's West End in 1975. This edition features the author's revised version of the script presented at the Hampstead Theatre in 2009.

This zany, hilarious farce was a London hit and won the West End Theatre Best Comedy Award of the year. At a reunion dinner at a "lesser college" of an "older university" are a number of graduates now in their early forties and mostly in responsible, influential positions. All starts smoothly with conventional greetings and old boy reminiscences. As the evening goes on, the facade falls away...|1 woman, 8 men

Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize'Good God, thought Oliver, as he saw the smile. She thinks I'm him! And all at once he knew it was so. HewasDr Norman Wilfred.'On the sunlit Greek island of Skios, the Fred Toppler Foundation's annual lecture is to be given by Dr Norman Wilfred, the world-famous authority on the scientific organisation of science. He turns out to be surprisingly young and charming - not at all the intimidating figure they had been expecting. The Foundation's guests are soon eating out of his hand. So, even sooner, is Nikki, the attractive and efficient organiser.Meanwhile, in a remote villa at the other end of the island, Nikki's old school-friend Georgie waits for the notorious chancer she has rashly agreed to go on holiday with, and who has only too characteristically failed to turn up. Trapped in the villa with her, by an unfortunate chain of misadventure, is a balding old gent called Dr Norman Wilfred, who has lost his whereabouts, his luggage, his temper and increasingly all normal sense of reality - everything he possesses apart from the flyblown text of a well-travelled lecture on the scientific organisation of science...And as the time draws ever nearer for one or other Dr Wilfred - or possibly both - to give the eagerly awaited lecture, so Skios - Greece - Europe - career off their appointed track.Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize,Skiosis a story of mislaid identity, misdirected passion and miscalculated consequences. Michael Frayn is also the celebrated author of fifteen plays includingNoises Off,CopenhagenandAfterlife.His other bestsellingnovels includeHeadlong, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize andSpies, which won the Whitbread Best Novel Award.

Three plays by comic dramatist Michael Frayn, compiled as a follow-up edition to "Michael Frayn Plays: One". Included is Frayn's adaptation of Chekhov's first play, here called "Wild Honey". "Balmoral" and "Benefactors" are touched by politics and social indictments of people and systems.