The Visit of the Old Lady, Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

A three-act drama, The Visit is a profound and bitter critical reflection on capitalist society. In the town of Güllen, once a prosperous industrial center now fallen into decline, an elderly former resident who left in her youth, the multimillionaire Claire Zachanassian, decides to return. Why? To save the town from bankruptcy. But money comes at a price: the death of a man. That man who, in the past, had…

Will the town accept?

Thus this fictional microcosm becomes a confrontation between money and morality: can everything be bought with money, even a man’s life, even justice?

Written in 1955 and first staged in 1956, The Visit is a tragicomedy that explores, with prose as ironic as it is sharp, human corruptibility, the power of money, and the manipulation of the masses.

You will read this work and criticize the villains, but are we really so far from selling our morality for a handful of money?

edited: Emilia S.