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The Killer, and Other Plays

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SKU:
497
Condition:
Like New
Format:
Paperback, 159 pages
Publisher:
Grove Press, Inc., 1960
Edition:
First Grove Press Edition, Thirteenth Printing
Widely regarded as Europe's most imaginative dramatist, Eugène Ionesco is one of the true innovators of the modern age. In The Killer, a three-act drama staged with great success in Paris and London, he creates a study of pure evil. Bèrenger, a conscientious citizen, finds himself in a radiantly beautiful city marred only by the presence of a mysterious, irrational killer. Bèrenger's determination to find the murderer in the face of official indifference, and his final defeat at the hands of an impersonal, pitiless cruelty are the elements of a parable which speak with the universality found in Kafka's The Trial. The Killer, says Pierre Marcabru in Arts, is "Ionesco's best play...Never has despair had such a tone, at first ironic and ultimately lugubrious. Here good will and hate clash in an implacable encounter where evils triumphs...Ionesco has transcended his own earlier dramatic limits. Beginning with a verbal revolt, he has reached a point of logical revolt." In Improvisation, or The Shepherd's Chameleon, Ionesco plays the part of himself facing three learned scholars who claim to know better than he what he should write and how he should set about it. Inspired by one of Molière's farces, Improvisation is a wildly hilarious comedy that sets forth the playwright's own ideas of the theater. The last play, Maid to Marry, creates a comic frenzy out of the phony verbiage in a conversation between a man and a woman. Translated by Donald Watson

Widely regarded as Europe's most imaginative dramatist, Eugène Ionesco is one of the true innovators of the modern age.  In The Killer, a three-act drama staged with great success in Paris and London, he creates a study of pure evil.  Bèrenger, a conscientious citizen, finds himself in a radiantly beautiful city marred only by the presence of a mysterious, irrational killer.  Bèrenger's determination to find the murderer in the face of official indifference, and his final defeat at the hands of an impersonal, pitiless cruelty are the elements of a parable which speak with the universality found in Kafka's The Trial.  The Killer, says Pierre Marcabru in Arts, is "Ionesco's best play...Never has despair had such a tone, at first ironic and ultimately lugubrious.  Here good will and hate clash in an implacable encounter where evils triumphs...Ionesco has transcended his own earlier dramatic limits.  Beginning with a verbal revolt, he has reached a point of logical revolt."

In Improvisation, or The Shepherd's Chameleon, Ionesco plays the part of himself facing three learned scholars who claim to know better than he what he should write and how he should set about it.  Inspired by one of Molière's farces, Improvisation is a wildly hilarious comedy that sets forth the playwright's own ideas of the theater.  The last play, Maid to Marry, creates a comic frenzy out of the phony verbiage in a conversation between a man and a woman.

Translated by Donald Watson

About the Author

Eugène Ionesco, the Romanian-born author, has become world famous as one of the most important playwrights of the "Theater of the Absurd."  He has written numerous plays which are now part of the classic repertory of contemporary drama, including Rhinoceros, Exit the King, The Bald Soprano, The Lesson, Killing Game, Macbett, and A Hell of a Mess, as well as the autobiographical Fragments of a Journal and Present Past, Past Present.  Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence.