Staring Into the Abyss

The catastrophic fault line in the Western world exposed.

The absurdist play The Arsonists, written by Swiss novelist and playwright Max Frisch and staged in 1958, opens with the middle-class protagonist, a businessman named Biedermann, commenting in exasperation on a wave of arson attacks in the community. The perpetrators reportedly manage to talk their way into people’s homes, take up residence in their att…