The politically active author's work included avant-garde dramas, philosophical crime novels, and macabre satire.

[citation needed] In 1990 he gave two famous speeches, one in honour of Václav Havel ("Die Schweiz, ein Gefängnis?/Switzerland a Prison?")

on discovering that he had been spied on for five decades, along with 800,000 of his left-leaning fellow citizens, by the Swiss secret service;[2] the other in honour of Mikhail Gorbachev ("Kants Hoffnung/Kant's Hope").

Between 1948 and 1949 Dürrenmatt wrote several segments and sketches for the anti-Nazi Cabaret Cornichon in Zürich including the short single-act grotesque play Der Gerettete (The Rescued).

Set in the year A.D. 476, the play explores the last days of the Roman Empire, presided over and brought about by its last emperor, Romulus.

The satirical drama The Physicists (Die Physiker, 1962), which deals with issues concerning science and its responsibility for dramatic and dangerous changes to the world, has also been presented in translation.

The two late works Labyrinth and Turmbau zu Babel are a collection of unfinished ideas, stories and philosophical thoughts.

In November 2024, Ian McDiarmid adapted A Conversation at Night and An Incident at Twilight under the name Different Truths for BBC Radio Drama on 3.