Gantenbein

Mein Name sei Gantenbein (roughly "[Let] my name be Gantenbein") is a 1964 novel by the Swiss writer Max Frisch. It was translated into English in 1965 by Michael Bullock as A Wilderness of Mirrors; this translation was later reprinted under the title Gantenbein in 1982. The novel features a narrator who recounts a multitude of dislocated, fragmented stories, which together reveal certain traits and patterns.

== Plot == Abandoned by his wife, the narrator sits in an empty apartment with covered furniture. He says he has had an experience and is now searching for the story that goes with it. He tries on stories like clothes. Each “I” that speaks, he says, is only a role; every person invents for themselves the story they take to be their life. As an example, he tells of the milkman who goes mad because his identity has worn out and he cannot come up with a new one, and of the self-styled unlucky fellow who would rather lose his lottery winnings than change his self-image.