Becket


Jean Anouilh - 1959
    Winner of the Antoinette Perry Award for Best Play of the Season, Anouilh's monumental work—introduced in this edition by the acclaimed writer and critic Andre Aciman—draws from historical events in the Norman conquest of England to paint a profound and enduring portrait of the saint and martyr.

In the Sea There are Crocodiles: Based on the True Story of Enaiatollah Akbari


Fabio Geda - 2010
    Thus begins Enaiat's remarkable and often punishing five-year ordeal.When ten-year-old Enaiatollah Akbari's small village in Afghanistan falls prey to Taliban rule in early 2000, his mother shepherds the boy across the border into Pakistan but has to leave him there all alone to fend for himself. Thus begins Enaiat's remarkable and often punish­ing five-year ordeal, which takes him through Iran, Turkey, and Greece before he seeks political asylum in Italy at the age of fifteen. Along the way, Enaiat endures the crippling physical and emotional agony of dangerous border crossings, trekking across bitterly cold mountain pathways for days on end or being stuffed into the false bottom of a truck. But not every­one is as resourceful, resilient, or lucky as Enaiat, and there are many heart-wrenching casualties along the way. Based on Enaiat's close collaboration with Italian novelist Fabio Geda and expertly rendered in English by an award-winning translator, this novel reconstructs the young boy's memories, perfectly preserving the childlike perspective and rhythms of an intimate oral history. Told with humor and humanity, In the Sea There Are Crocodiles brilliantly captures Enaiat's moving and engaging voice and lends urgency to an epic story of hope and survival.

Under Milk Wood


Dylan Thomas - 1954
    A moving and hilarious account of a spring day in a small Welsh coastal town, Under Milk Wood is "lyrical, impassioned and funny, an Our Town given universality" (The New Statesman and Nation).

The Animal Gazer


Edgardo Franzosini - 2015
    . . . Franozosini illuminates the life of this singular artist . . . an artist capable of sculpting in bronze the movements of animals and grasping their vitality in such a way that critics, after years of neglect, are discovering its unique power." —Il GiornaleA hypnotic novel inspired by the strange and fascinating life of sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti, brother of the fabled automaker. With World War I closing in and the Belle Époque teetering to a close, Bugatti leaves his native Milan for Paris, and then volunteers in Antwerp during the war. While there, he obsessively observes and sculpts the baboons, giraffes, and panthers in the zoo, finding empathy with their plight and identifying with their life in captivity. With the Germans dropping bombs over the city, the Belgian authorities are forced to make a heart-wrenching decision about the fate of the caged animals, and Bugatti is stricken with grief from which he'll never recover. His own end follows suit shortly: he returns to Paris, and at the age of thirty-one, he is dead of suicide.Rembrandt Bugatti's work is now displayed in major art museums around the world and routinely fetches millions at auction. Edgardo Franzosini recreates the young artist's life with intense lyricism, passion, and sensitivity.Edgardo Franzosini, born in 1952, is the author of five novels. The Animal Gazer won two distinguished Italian literary awards in 2016, the Premio Comisso and the Premio Dessi.

Rosmersholm


Henrik Ibsen - 1886
    But his increasingly liberal ideas make him an object of suspicion to the local worthies, who also disapprove of the presence in his house of a much younger woman, Rebecca West, formerly his wife’s companion. As their relationship deepens and their isolation builds, the increasing moral pressures they face force them inexorably towards their fate...

Equus


Peter Shaffer - 1973
    Through a psychiatrist's analysis of the events, Shaffer creates a chilling portrait of how materialism and convenience have killed our capacity for worship and passion and, consequently, our capacity for pain. Rarely has a playwrite created an atmosphere and situation that so harshly pinpoint the spiritual and mental decay of modern man.

New Finnish Grammar


Diego Marani - 2000
    The doctor, of a newly arrived German hospital ship, Pietri Friari gives the unconscious soldier medical assistance. His new patient has no documents or anything that can identifying him. When he regains consciousness he has lost his memory and cannot even remember what language he speaks. From a few things found on the man the doctor, who is originally from Finland, believes him to be a sailor and a fellow countryman, who somehow or other has ended up in Trieste. The doctor dedicates himself to teaching the man Finnish, beginning the reconstruction of the identity of Sampo Karjalainen, leading the missing man to return to Finland in search of his identity and his past.New Finnish Grammar won three literary prizes in Italy in 2001: Premio Grinzane Cavour, Premio Ostia Mare and Premio Giuseppe Desi and has received critical acclaim across Europe.

Aunt Dan and Lemon


Wallace Shawn - 1985
    Lemon tells the audience about the overwhelming influence in her life of her parents' friend "Aunt Dan," an eccentric, passionate professor whose stories and seductive opinions enthrall Lemon from the time she is a young girl. The relationship that develops between Lemon and Aunt Dan and the conversations that went on in a small house on the bottom of an English garden form the focus of this play about political orientation and the allure of certain ideas-even if they lead to murder. A forceful play exposing the banality of society's evil, Aunt Dan & Lemon explores the ease with which good and bad become reconciled in the human mind.

After the Fall


Arthur Miller - 1964
    In the background are key figures in his life, and they move in and out of his narrative. The narration shades into scenes, little and big. They are revelations and illuminations. They remind Quentin of an awkward young girl whom he made proud of herself. They bring the tortured image of his mother's death and another of his mother's fury with his father, who lost all in trying to save a floundering business. They crisscross through his relations with a number of women the first wife who wanted to be a separate person, the second who drove him into a separateness and a possible third who knew, as a German raised in a furnace of concentration camps, that 'survival can be hard to bear.' These intertwining images bring back the memories of inquisition when men were asked to name names of those who had joined with them in a communism that they mistook for a better future AFTER THE FALL is a pain-wracked drama; it is also Mr. Miller's maturest For to sit in Mr. Miller's theater is to be in an adult world concerned with a search that cuts to the bone."

The Homecoming Party


Carmine Abate - 2004
    Sitting on the steps of the village church in front of an enormous bonfire lit in celebration of the season, a father and his son exchange stories. The father speaks of life as an emigrant from Italy, in perpetual limbo between departure and return, between France and his home. The son tells of a life marred by his father's long is absemces, but also of an otherwise idyllic childhood spent in a vivid, enchanting land. Each hides an awful secret concerning the fate of a mysterious man whose affair with the boy's older sister changed their lives. On this night of nights, a shared truth that has long been buried in the hearts of both men will finally emerge.Set in an Arberesh town in southern Italy and told in alternating first-person voices, The Homecoming Party is simultaneoulsy a coming-of-age novel, a love story, and a heartfelt cry against the atrocious standards of living that force so many southern Italians to seek a better life elsewhere.In Antony Shugaar's masterful translation, The Homecoming Party is an intense and moving novel about the difficulties of saying goodbye from one of Italy's greatest storytellers.

Three O'Clock in the Morning


Gianrico Carofiglio - 2017
    His father, a brilliant mathematician, hasn’t played a large part in his life since divorcing Antonio’s mother but when Antonio is diagnosed with epilepsy, they travel to Marseille to visit a doctor who may hold the hope for an effective treatment. It is there, in a foreign city, under strained circumstances, that they will get to know each other and connect for the first time.A beautiful, gritty, and charming port city where French old-world charm meets modern bohemia, father and son stroll the streets sharing strained small talk. But as the hours pass and day gives way to night, the two find themselves caught in a series of caffeine-imbued adventures involving unexpected people (and unforeseen trysts) that connect father and son for the first time. As the two discuss poetry, family, sex, math, death, and dreams, their experience becomes a mesmerizing 48-hour microcosm of a lifetime relationship. Both learn much about illusions and regret, about talent and redemption, and, most of all, about love. Elegant, warm, and tender, set against the vivid backdrop of 1980s Marseille and its beautiful calanques—a series of cliffs and bays on the city’s outskirts—Three O’Clock in the Morning is a bewitching coming-of-age story imbued with nostalgia and a revelatory exploration of time and fate, youth and adulthood.

Light Shining in Buckinghamshire


Caryl Churchill - 1992
    It was first staged in 1976 at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs and revived at the National Theatre in 1996.Caryl Churchill has written for the stage, television and radio. A renowned and prolific playwright, her plays include Cloud Nine, Top Girls, Far Away, Drunk Enough to Say I Love You?, Bliss, Love and Information, Mad Forest and A Number. In 2002, she received the Obie Lifetime Achievement Award and 2010, she was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Equivocation


Bill Cain - 2009
    King James commissions Shakespeare to write a play about the Gunpowder Plot.

27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays


Tennessee Williams - 1945
    Whether Williams is writing of derelict roomers in a New Orleans boarding house (The Lady of Larkspur Lotion) or the memories of a venerable traveling salesman (The Last of My Solid Gold Watches) or of delinquent children (This Property is Condemned), his insight into human nature is that of the poet. He can compress the basic meaning of life—its pathos or its tragedy, its bravery or the quality of its love—into one small scene or a few moments of dialogue.Mr. Williams's views on the role of the little theater in American culture are contained in a stimulating essay, "Something wild...," which serves as an introduction to this collection.

Death in August


Marco Vichi - 2002
    Inspector Bordelli is one of the few policemen left in the deserted city. He spends his days on routine work, and his nights tormented by the heat and mosquitoes. Suddenly one night, a telephone call gives him a new sense of purpose: the suspected death of a wealthy Signora. Bordelli rushes to her hilltop villa, and picks the locks. The old woman is lying on her bed - apparently killed by an asthma attack, though her medicine has been left untouched.With the help of his young protégé, the victim's eccentric brother, and a semi-retired petty thief, the inspector begins a murder investigation. Each suspect has a solid alibi, but there is something that doesn't quite add up . . .