In The Birthday Party, a musician who escapes to a dilapidated boarding house becomes the victim of a ritual murder in which everyone- assassins, victim, and observers- implacably plays out the role
This brilliantly written, deeply moving play about the problems of a young couple with a spastic daughter-the "Joe Egg" of the title-was described by Ronald Bryden in The Observer (London) as a "rema
Included in this volume are Suzuki’s famous study “Enlightenment and Ignorance,” a chapter on “Practical Methods of Zen Instruction,” the essays “On Satori —
The celebrated Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal, who lived in Madrid under the oppression of the Franco regime, writes passionately of human atrocity and of hope. This collection of plays embodies
Alone with Others is a uniquely contemporary guide to understanding the timeless message of Buddhism, and in particular its relevance in actual human relations. It was inspired by Shantideva’s
Renowned Beckett scholar Ruby Cohn has selected some of Beckett's criticisms, reviews, letters, and other unpublished materials that shed new light on his work.
'First Love', a man's musings about his youth occasioned by his visit to his father's grave, was first written by Samuel Beckett in French in 1945, but it wasn't until 1973 that he completed this the
This collection of Nobel Prize winner Samuel Beckett's dramatic pieces includes a short stage play, two radio plays, and two pantomimes. The stage play, Krapp's Last Tape, evolves a shattering drama
Long banned in the United States and England, My Life and Loves is one of the most notorious autobiographies ever written. Famous for its erotic passages, it is also one of the richest and most enter
These four novels display Oe’s passionate and original vision. Oe was ten when American jeeps first drove into the mountain village where he lived, and his literary work reveals the tension and ambiguity forged by the collapse of values of his childhood on the one hand and the confrontation with American writers on the other. The earliest of his novels included here, Prize Stock, reveals the strange relationship between a Japanese boy and a captured black American pilot in a Japanese village. Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness tells of the close relationship between an outlandishly fat father and his mentally defective son, Eeyore. Aghwee the Sky Monster is about a young man’s first job — chaperoning a banker’s son who is haunted by the ghost of a baby in a white nightgown. The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away is the longest piece in this collection and Oe’s most disturbing work to date. The narrator lies in a hospital bed waiting to die of a liver cancer that he has probably imagi
The author of Hurlyburly again explores the struggle between hope and anguish in the human spirit in this story of two small-time jewel thieves united in a strangely unsettling friendship and the con
Book jacket/back: This extensively revised version of David Rabe's 1973 play returns it to the two-act structure originally intended by the author, as it sharpens and focuses his searing portrait of
A provocative novel by the most influential living French writer, Recollections of the Golden Triangle is a tour de force: a literary thriller constructed of wildly diverse elements—fantasy and
In With a Moon in Transit, Jacqueline Osherow has given us her most accomplished poetry to date. Integrating the strengths of her earlier work - humor, honesty, artifice, testimony - into compelling
The Thief's Journal is perhaps Jean Genet's most authentically autobiographical novel, personifying his quest for spiritual glory through the pursuit of evil. Writing in the intensely lyrical prose s
These two novellas demonstrate why Alain Robbe-Grillet, the leading practitioner and theorist of the noveau roman, is one of the most discussed and controversial writers of the post-war era. In La Ma
When Marie decides to leave Bruce, she delivers herself of a torrent of ferocious humor and foul-mouthed vituperation concerning him and their marriage, not to mention love, hate, caring, commitment,
The best-selling, Pulitzer Prize-winning classic hailed by The New York Times Book Review as "a masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comi
