Stiller (novel)

Stiller is structured partly as a first-person prison diary or confession written by the narrator while he is detained, intercut with the testimony and recollections of other characters who knew the missing sculptor. This layered formal structure creates a complex tension between the narrator's self-presentation and the contradictory accounts of those around him.

Both Stiller (1954) and Homo Faber (1957) explore Frisch's recurring themes of identity, self-deception, and the impossibility of escaping fate, but from different angles. While Stiller focuses on a man denying his past identity, Homo Faber follows an engineer whose rationalist worldview unravels through a series of fateful coincidences on a journey through the Americas.

The novel begins with the protagonist being arrested upon returning to Switzerland after living abroad in America. He is identified as the missing sculptor Anatol Stiller, but he furiously and persistently denies being this person, setting in motion the central drama of identity that drives the entire book.

Julika is the wife of the missing sculptor Anatol Stiller, and she is one of the key figures who confronts the narrator upon his return to Switzerland. Her complicated history with Stiller, including the emotional tensions and fractures in their marriage, becomes central to the narrator's inescapable confrontation with his past.