Nathalie Sarraute is best known as a novelist whose investigations of human behavior and the motivations behind it have created a new kind of social novel. The doyenne of the nouveau roman group of post-war French writers, she had already established herself in the thirties as an experimental writer with a new approach to the observation of human nature. Her first book Tropisms, a series of short sketches demonstrating how behavioral tics often give away what is really happening behind the facades we assume, became the model for all her subsequent work including her eight important novels. These five plays translate her special technique onto the stage. They are plays that dramatize inter-personal and inter-social relationships, refining subtlety and nuance to an incredible degree and depicting the ways in which human beings influence each other and the antagonisms and irritations that we all experience. Often without knowing why. The confrontation of generations, of different class, aesthetic or educational backgrounds, the ways in which we come to understand each other, despise each other, deceive each other -whether tolerated or not - is the raw material of these plays, all of which have been successfully staged in France by the Renaud-Barrault Company and in many other countries in translation. Silence and The Lie have been seen in London. The five plays (It Is There, It's Beautiful, Izzum, The Lie, Silence) are printed in anti-chronological order with the most recent first. This was translated by Barbara Wright, one of Britain's most distinguished translators of important contemporary French literature and the others by Maria Jolas, for many years a close friend and translator of Nathalie Sarraute.
TOC: It Is There
It's Beautiful
Izzum
The Lie
Silence

Collected Plays (English and French Edition)

Sarraute, Nathalie

New York: G. Braziller

United States, United States of America

1ST, First Edition, PS, 1981

November 1981

Obscured text on back cover

Five Plays By The French Experimental Writer Explore Interpersonal And Social Relationships As Well As The Elements Of Behavior Determining The Character Of These Relationships And Often Leading To Confrontation

107 p. ; 21 cm
Translation of: Théâtre / Nathalie Sarraute
It is there -- It's beautiful -- Izzum -- The lie -- Silence

2023-06-28