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Watzlaff
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Vatzlav

And Other Plays
Published by Diogenes as Watzlaff
Original Title: Vatzlav
In ›Nochmal von vorn‹ an elderly gentleman and his daughter-in-law withdraw to a country cottage to have a tête-à-tête in peace. However, a ghost appears who turns out to be a dictator to whom the father-in-law had been enslaved in body and soul in younger years. What begins as an erotomanic farce and seems to escalate into a grotesque conflict of the generations finally becomes a deadly serious political satire about a subject which is still of topical interest: the ghost of totalitarianism. In ›Propheten‹ a dictator promises his people a prophet in order to preserve power. However, two of them appear at the same time looking exactly alike. Who is the right one? The one who entered from the right or the one who entered from the left? Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar, the state intellectual counsellors, do not know what to recommend. However, since the nation cannot be expected to accept two prophets, they advise the dictator to have one of them decapitated by the official servant… Watzlaff lives in the ›land of restraint‹. When he crosses the sea he suffers shipwreck. A good opportunity for Watzlaff to flee to the ›land of freedom‹. His alter ego, in the figure of a double expresses some last doubts - but Watzlaff, unmoved, lets him drown in the sea. Now there is nothing more to prevent him from becoming rich, powerful and happy, or so Watzlaff thinks. However, it becomes quickly apparent that it is not so simple to find one's way in the beautiful, new world.

General Fiction
272 pages
1994

978-3-257-06026-3

World rights are handled by Diogenes

»Many stylistic elements from the theatre of the absurd emerge in Mrożek's grotesques, and what at the first glance may appear to be pure fun in the absurd, is seen to be deliberate camouflage as soon as the political heart of the matter has been recognised: the bizarre ideas that seem to belong to a playful world of fantasy to start with, capture the dictatorial cravings of the real world in a satirical manner - and not only in the East, let it be understood, but all over.«
Georg Hensel