Harold Pinter

Aiming to lay bare the act of blatant state terrorism that is the invasion and occupation of Iraq, this book seeks to reveal the extraordinary tapestry of lies, distortions and gross media manipulation that underpin it. It looks at how public opinion is wilfully ignored and "democracy" used as a figleaf for the furthering of colonial ambitions.

Eight short plays: Triangle, Gladly Otherwise, The Black and White, Trouble in the Works, Cleaning Up Justice, Collector's Piece, Conference and Can You Hear Me?

Harold Pinter's Betrayal received its premiere at the National Theatre, London, in November 1978. After an initially guarded response from the critics, the work was rapidly reevaluated and won the Olivier Award for Best New Play the following year. Set in London and Venice the play has an innovative chronology that opens at the end of an affair and works its way backwards over nine years, from 1977 to 1968. It is widely considered one of the playwright's pivotal works.

In a fashionable restaurant, two gangsterish brothers, formerly from the East End but now "strategy consultants who enforce the peace", are celebrating a wedding anniversary with their wives, who are sisters. At the next table, a banker is dining with his wife, formerly his secretary. Violent, wildly funny, this play displays a vivid zest for life.

Flora and Edward invite the match seller into their home. The match seller is silent; faced with this silence, Edward destroys himself while Flora gains strength, until finally Flora turns Edward out with the tray of matches. The midsummer's day which began with Edward having a 'slight ache' ends in his total disintegration.

In a fashionable restaurant, two gangsterish brothers, formerly from the East End but now 'strategy consultants who enforce the peace', are celebrating a wedding anniversary with their wives, who are sisters. At the next table, a banker is dining with his wife, formerly his secretary. Violent, wildly funny, this play displays a vivid zest for life. Diners and the staff at an elegant restaurant treat audiences to some unusually entertaining fare in this recent London hit by one of the major voices of modern theatre.

Rose and Bert rent a room that might almost be a paleolithic cave; the outside is terrifying and unknown. Rose never goes out, Bert only goes to drive his van with furious aggression. A young couple call, and then a blind black man. Bert comes home, massive with triumph at smashing every car that challenged his van. Finding the stranger he kicks him to death and Rose goes blind.

Albert finds himself dominated by his mother. At an office party he is mercilessly teased by his colleagues and arrives home, his temper rising. When his mother nags he attacks and leaves her, gets picked up by a girl and is able to reduce her to humble servility. Yet, when he arrives home his mother is there fully recovered and ready to reassert her dominance.

Stella returns from her dress collection in Leeds to tell James, her husband, that she has been unfaithful. James confronts Bill, pressing for the truth, already determined to believe the worst. Bill confesses that he and Stella had only talked about spending the night together. It had amused him to perpetuate Stella's story - to hurt his friend Harry. Is this the truth? Stella is silent.

Set against the decayed elegance of a house in London's Hampstead Heath, in No Man's Land two men face each other over a drink. Do they know each other, or is each performing an elaborate character of recognition? Their ambiguity--and the comedy--intensify with the arrival of two younger men, the one ostensibly a manservant, the other a male secretary. All four inhabit a no man's land between time present and time remembered, between reality and imagination--a territory which Pinter explores with his characteristic mixture of biting wit, aggression, and anarchic sexuality.

Skuespillet Hybelen handler om et eldre ektepar som bor i en liten hybel, og hva som skjer når flere personer kommer inn i livet deres i løpet av en kveld. Spesielt skildres den eldre kvinnen og de valg hun etter hvert må ta. Det handler om individets oppløsning i møte med fremmede, behovet vi har for virkelighetsflukt, og kampen vi alle kjemper for et eget, trygt rom. Skuespillet Kjøkkenheisen er en komedie om to leiemordere som sitter i en kjeller og venter på beskjed om hvem deres neste offer er. Plutselig blir en konvolutt skjøvet inn under døren deres. Den inneholder 12 fyrstikker. Leiemorderne prøver å finne ut hvem som kan ha sendt den, men når en kjøkkenheis daler ned mot dem fra oven, klarer de ikke lenger å kontrollere frykten for at noe er galt.

'Betrayal is a new departure and a bold one . . . Pinter has found a way of making memory active and dramatic, giving an audience the experience of the mind's accelerating momentum as it pieces together the past with a combination of curiosity and regret. He shows man betrayed not only by man, but by time - a recurring theme which has found its proper scenic correlative . . . Pinter captures the psyche's sly manoeuvres for self-respect with a sardonic forgiveness . . . a master craftsman honouring his talent by setting it new, difficult tasks' New Society'There is hardly a line into which desire, pain, alarm, sorrow, rage or some kind of blend of feelings has not been compressed, like volatile gas in a cylinder less stable than it looks . . . Pinter's narrative method takes "what's next?" out of the spectator's and replaces it with the rather deeper "how?" and "why?" Why did love pass? How did these people cope with the lies, the evasions, the sudden dangers, panic and the contradictory feelings behind their own deftly engineered masks? The play's subject is not sex, not even adultery, but the politics of betrayal and the damage it inflicts on all involved.' The TimesFirst staged at the National Theatre in 1978, Betrayal was revived at the Almeida Theatre, London, in 1991. Twenty years after its first showing, it returned to the National in 1998.

A collection of hard-hitting essays and other pieces attacking nuclear proliferation and Western foreign policy.

This revised third volume of Harold Pinter's work includes The Homecoming, Old Times, No Man's Land, four shorter plays, six revue sketches and a short story. It also contains the speech given by Pinter in 1970 on being awarded the German Shakespeare Prize. The Homecoming 'Of all Harold Pinter's major plays, The Homecoming has the most powerful narrative line... You are fascinated, lured on, sucked into the vortex.' Sunday Telegraph 'The most intense expression of compressed violence to be found anywhere in Pinter's plays.' The Times Old Times 'A rare quality of high tension is evident, revealing in Old Times a beautifully controlled and expressive formality that has seldom been achieved since the plays of Racine.' Financial Times 'Harold Pinter's poetic, Proustian Old Times has the inscrutability of a mysterious picture, and the tension of a good thriller.' Independent No Man's Land 'The work of our best living playwright in its command of the language and its power to erect a coherent structure in a twilight zone of confusion and dismay.' The Times

Drama Harold Pinter Characters: 4 male 2 female Interior Set In a small house at a coastal resort live a man his mentally wayward wife and their boarder who has been with them for a year. He is a strange chap unkempt and in flight from we know not what. Enter an even stranger sleek Jewish man and his muscle bound Irish henchman. The mentally immature wife accommodates them with a room and then decides that it is time for the boarder to have a birthday. At the pa

När 2005 års nobelpristagare i litteratur Harold Pinter höll sitt nobelprisanförande var det många som tappade hakan. Aldrig förr hade den tribun som nobelpriset innebär använts för ett ­sådant politiskt brandtal. Med stor retorisk skicklighet och pregnans gjorde Pinter talet till en svidande uppgörelse med den politiska lögn som enligt honom regerar i västvärlden. För en svensk publik som bekantat sig med Harold Pinter genom hans pjäser kom detta kanske som en överraskning. I England däremot hade Pinter sedan länge en position som ett "nationens samvete". Hans fräna uttalanden­ om USA:s och Natos militära angrepp i allmänhet och den dåvarande premiärministern Blair i synnerhet väckte stort rabalder i brittiska medier. Frihetens språk är en antologi med politiska texter och dikter som fördjupar bilden av ett av vår tids mest betydelse­fulla författarskap. "Trots synnerligen dåliga odds tror jag att en orubblig, bergfast och hårdnackad intellektuell beslutsamhet för att fastställa vad som verkligen är sant i våra liv och samhällen är en fundamental förpliktelse, som åligger oss alla som medborgare. Den är i själva verket tvingande. Om en sådan beslutsamhet inte innefattas i vår politiska vision har vi inget hop - människans värdighet." Ur Nobelpristalet "I författandets postmoderna kändisvärld delas priser ut till dem som ­konkurrerar om kejsarens gunst; de politiskt riskabla göre sig icke besvär. Undantaget är Harold Pinter. Det är bara han som inte är tyst och inte pladdrar, som är modig och gör sin röst hörd." John Pilger i förordet

The Hothouse was first produced in 1980, though Harold Pinter wrote the play in 1958 just before commencing work on The Caretaker.'The Hothouse is one of Pinter's best plays: one that deals with the worm-eaten corruption of bureaucracy, the secrecy of government and the disjunction between language and experience.'Michael Billington.'The Hothouse is at once sinister and hilarious, suggesting an unholy alliance between Kafka and Fedyeau.'The National Theatre presented a major revival of The Hothouse in July 2007. 'The foremost representative of British drama in the second half of the twentieth century.'Swedish Academy citation on awarding Harold Pinter the Nobel Prize for Literature, 2005

Harold Pinter (f.1930) livnærte seg som turnerande skodespelar i ungdommen, og blei i 1957 spurt om han kunne skrive eit stykke som eit studentteater i så fall skulle setje opp veka etter. Pinter gjekk i gang, og på fire dagar skreiv han The Room. Og med det rommet, der ei dør fører ut til ei fiendtleg og farleg veg, er ein av dei grunnleggjande dramatiske situasjonane i Pinters forfattarskap etablert. Harold Pinter har sidan skrive ei lang rekke stykke, dei fleste ganske korte, og noko av det som imponerer mest med forfattarskapen er den konsekvens, den stadige variering av det same, eller om ein vil, den mangel på fornying, som lar seg følgje i stykka hans, til dømes i Landskap, Stille, Natt (frå rundt 1970) og i Ingenmannsland (1975), fram til Av jord er du komen (1996).