"Vintage Stoppard in its intelligence and wit." --VarietyIt is 1936, and A. E. Housman is being ferried across the river Styx, glad to be dead at last--yet his memories are dramatically alive. Confronting his younger self from the vantage of death, Housman thinks back to the man he loved, who could not return his feelings, and considers the Oxford of his youth, suffused with the flamboyant influence of the Wildean Aesthetic movement and the restrictions of High Victorian morality. Winner of the Evening Standard's Best Play Award, The Invention of Love inhabits Housman's imagination as if a dream, illuminating both the pain of hopeless love and the passion displaced into poetry.

This is Tom Stoppard's award-winning play, set in Derbyshire. The orderly classicism of Lady Croom's Capability Brown grounds are being turned into picturesque romantic chaos, as fashion dictates, by landscape architect "Culpability Noakes". In a Regency room overlooking the work is Lady Croom's brilliant adolescent daughter - Thomasina Coverly, with her handsome, clever tutor Septimus Hodge. Their maths lesson is disturbed by, among others, the imperious, amorous Lady Croom and Ezra Chater, a cuckold and minor poet, determined on satisfaction. One hundred and eighty years later, in the same room, a corresponding group, comprising a mathematician, a biographer/historian, and a vulgar academic, try to unravel the events of 1809 - with spectacularly wrong results.

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aAn invaluable anthology. . . . The individuals in this anthology . . . tell stories so vital and impassioned that we are moved to become lecteurs engagA(c)s, moved not merely by their writing but by their courage and conviction of the their lives.a
--"BookForum"

aAs an act of commemoration, as well as a sobering reminder of the world in which writers are frequently -- and all too easily--silenced, this is an exceptional anthology.a
--"Publishers Weekly"

aSome of the prose is sparse, testifying to the economy of writers hurried by the threat of discovery; other pieces are rich with the care of dazzling minds left with no company but words.a
--"Utne Reader"

aThe selections make clear that many countries not ordinarily thought of as authoritarian are nevertheless not really safe for free expression. A compelling and worthwhile purchase; recommended for all libraries.a
--"Library Journal"

aPEN acts as the voice and conscience of everyone who cares about literature. In telling their stories, the incredible writers in this collection uncover some of the worldas darker corners. This extraordinary book shows us once again why literature matters.a
--Antonia Fraser, author of "Marie Antoinette: The Journey"

aI defy readers not to be profoundly moved by this splendid anthology. But I have no doubt they will also be stirred by the extraordinary courage of all these writers to triumph over injustice and cruelty. This book is an inspiration.a
--Ronald Harwood, Oscar-winning screenwriter of "The Pianist"; author of the play "The Dresser"

aEngrossing. Reza Barahenias piece is simply electric and others, such asKen Saro-Wiwaas letters, deeply moving. More than anything the collection stands as a testament of courage and a clarion call to recognize free expression for what it really is -- a basic human right.a
--Monica Ali, author of "Brick Lane"

aThis anthology is essential reading for anyone who has ever been moved by the written word. The authors of these pieces have one thing in common. They have all been coerced into not writing. This means that not only do they have powerful stories to tell, but that when, thanks very often to the work of organizations like PEN, they are eventually allowed to tell them, the result is spare, powerful writing, which jolts and challenges our prejudices and assumptions.a
--Michael Palin, author of numerous travel books, including "Around the World in 80 Days"

The freedom to write is under threat today throughout the world, with more than 1,000 writers, journalists, and publishers known to be imprisoned or persecuted in more than 100 countries. Writers Under Siege bears witness to the power and danger of the pen, and to the powerful longing for the right to use it without fear. Collected here are fifty contributions by writers who have paid dearly for the privilege of writing. Some have been tortured; some have been killed. All understand the cost of speaking up and speaking out.

This book was prepared by PEN, which is both the worldas oldest human rights organization and the oldest international literary organization. It commemorates PENas eighty-fifth anniversary and celebrates PENas work by giving voice to persecuted writers from around the globe. The contributors come from more than twenty countries, from Belarus to Zimbabwe. Many arewell-known in the English-speaking world, including Orhan Pamuk, from Turkey, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature; Harold Pinter, from England, winner of the 2005 Nobel Prize for Literature; Aung San Suu Kyi, from Burma, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize; and Anna Politkovskaya, from Russia, the noted journalist and author who was murdered in 2006, shortly after writing the piece that appears in this collection. Other contributors are less famous, perhaps, but their contributions are no less compelling. In prose and poetry, in fiction and non-fiction, they reveal the personal consequences of war, conflict, terrorism, and authoritarianism.

While the pieces collected here differ in their settings and their subjects, all are riveting. Grouped into four sections -- Prison, Death, Asylum, and The Freedom to Write -- they call our attention to the fundamental humanity we share and highlight the inhumanity we can so easily condone.

Contributors include: Chris Abani, Angel Cuadra Landrove, Asiye Guzel, Augusto Ernesto Llosa Giraldo, Mamadali Makhmudov, Orhan Pamuk, Harold Pinter, Anna Politkovskaya, Aung San Suu Kyi, Thich Tue Sy, Gai Tho, and Ken Saro-Wiwa.

A new, beautiful updated edition of Tom Stoppard's best-loved play and one of Grove Atlantic's bestselling backlist titles, published with a new introduction by Tom Stoppard to coincide with the 50th anniversary of its debutRosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is one of the most enduring and frequently performed plays of contemporary theater and has firmly established itself in the dramatic canon. Acclaimed as a modern masterpiece, it is the fabulously inventive tale of Hamlet as told from the worm's-eye view of the bewildered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters in Shakespeare's play. In Tom Stoppard's best-known work, this Shakespearean Laurel and Hardy finally get a chance to take the lead role, but do so in a world where echoes of Waiting for Godot resound, where reality and illusion intermix, and where fate leads our two heroes to a tragic but inevitable end. Revised and reissued to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the play's first performance, this definitive edition includes a new introduction and previously unpublished ancillary material.

The play begins with Max and Charlotte, a couple whose marriage seems about to rupture. But nothing one sees on a stage is the real thing, and some things are less real than others. Charlotte is an actress who has been appearing in a play about marriage by her husband, Henry. Max, her leading man, is also married to an actress, Annie. Both marriages are at the point of rupture because Henry and Annie have fallen in love. But is it the real thing?
In "The Real Thing," Tom Stoppard combines his characteristically brilliant wordplay and wit with flashes of insight that illuminate the nature--and the mystery--of love, creating a multi-toned play that challenges the mind while searching out the innermost secrets of the heart.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard’s epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today’s most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion.

Let others sing of war and a hero buffeted by fate. I sing of marriage and a marriage bed, and the endurance of love. With an introduction by the author, this is Tom Stoppard in the voice of Odysseus's wife recalling how the Trojan War 'took away my husband for ten years, and ten more coming the long way home', and Odysseus's dramatic arrival back on Ithaca. Weaving Homeric tropes with the wry wit of a woman of our time, Penelope tells this still vibrant love story from the oldest poem in Western literature.

Above all don't use the word good as though it meant something in evolutionary science. Hilary, a young psychology researcher at a brain-science institute, is nursing a private sorrow and a troubling question at work, where psychology and biology meet. If there is nothing but matter, what is consciousness? This is 'the hard problem' which puts Hilary at odds with her colleagues who include her first mentor Spike, her boss Leo and the billionaire founder of the institute, Jerry. Is the day coming when the computer and the fMRI scanner will answer all the questions psychology can ask? Meanwhile Hilary needs a miracle, and she is prepared to pray for one. The Hard Problem by Tom Stoppard premiered at the National Theatre, London, in January 2015.

I will have poetry in my life. And adventure. And love. Love above all. Promising young playwright Will Shakespeare is tormented by writer's block until he finds his muse in the form of passionate noblewoman, Viola De Lesseps. Their forbidden love draws many others, including Queen Elizabeth, into the drama and inspires Will to write the greatest love story of all time, Romeo and Juliet. Based on Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard's Oscar-winning screenplay, Lee Hall's stage adaptation of Shakespeare in Love premiered in July 2014 at the Noel Coward Theatre, London, in a co-production by Disney and Sonia Friedman Productions.

Finally making its Broadway debut in a limited engagement run, Tom Stoppard's humane and heartbreaking Olivier Award-winning play of love, family, and enduranceAt the beginning of the twentieth century, Leopoldstadt was the old, crowded Jewish quarter of Vienna, a city humming with artistic and intellectual excitement. Stoppard's epic yet intimate drama centers on Hermann Merz, a manufacturer and baptized Jew married to Catholic Gretl, whose extended family convene at their fashionable apartment on Christmas Day in 1899. Yet by the time the play closes, Austria has passed through the convulsions of war, revolution, impoverishment, annexation by Nazi Germany, and the Holocaust, which stole the lives of 65,000 Austrian Jews alone. From one of today's most acclaimed playwrights, Leopoldstadt is a human and heartbreaking drama of literary brilliance, historical verisimilitude, and powerful emotion.

'Tom Stoppard's Travesties is witty, playful and wise. Forty years on, it is starting to look timeless as well.' Sunday Times 'It is a champagne cocktail, compounded of a balletic nimbleness of invention, a bewildering intricacy of design which reaches the sublime heights where mathematics merge with poetry, and the audacious juggling of a master conjuror.' Sunday Telegraph 'A dazzling pyrotechnical feat that combines Wildean pastiche, political history, artistic debate, spoof reminiscence, and song-and-dance in marvellously judicious proportions. The text itself is a Joycean web of literary allusions; yet it also radiates sheer intellectual joie de vivre, as if Stoppard were delightedly communicating the fruits of his own researches.' Guardian Travesties was first performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company at the Aldwych Theatre, London, in June 1974. This edition includes a new preface by the author, and revisions made by him for a revival at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, in October 2016.?

Following his success with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, the author continues his association with Hamlet by taking the most well-known and best-loved lines from Shakespeare's play and condensing them into a hilarious version of the play lasting approximately thirteen minutes. The miraculous feat is followed by an encore which consists of a two-minute version of the play! The vast multitude of characters is played by six actors with hectic doubling, and the action takes place at a shortened version of Elsinore Castle.

Flora Crewe, an unconventional, young English poet living in India in 1930, is having her portrait painted by local artist Nairad Das and writing letters home to her sister Nell. Intermittent scenes, which are set in England in 1980, focus on Nell as she sorts through the cherished letters to aid Flora's would be biographer, Eldon Pike. Within this context, Indian Ink weaves a captivating, whimsical love story that underscores aspects of relationships between cultures and between the sexes that are indelible.4 women, 14 men

Arriving at the library to continue work on his dictionary, Johnson is horrified to discover that the place has been ransacked. Originally produced for television, this one act play combines wit, wordplay and a touch of comic absurdity.1 woman, 4 men

In 1972 an elderly avant garde artist is murdered, leaving his two friends suspecting each other. To reveal why, successive scenes flashback toward the 1920s and then progress back to 1972. Each of the three was infatuated with Sophie. Before she tragically went blind she fell in love with one of them after viewing his picture in a gallery.1 woman, 6 men

The provocative and funny look at exploitation and corruption, journalistic ethics, freedom of the press and marital infidelity is set in a fictional copper rich African nation. Dick Wagner of The Sunday Globe and a competing freelance journalist arrive at the jungle home of a white mine owner. Soon they are competing for the use of their host's telex, the attentions of his wife and a possible interview with the missing president of Kambawe.1 woman, 7 men

Dirty Linen concerns the investigation of a Select Committee into the moral standards of the House of Commons - a somewhat unconventional investigation, rendered not less so by the presence of an ultra-sexy secretary whose clothes have a trick of whisking off in the hands of various members. New-Found-Land is a duologue between two Home Office officials, with a tour-de-force speech on America by one of them.2 women, 8 men

Frank recognizes the voice of the GPO speaking clock as that of his long-lost wife. Determined to get her back, he forces his way into the inner sanctum of the Authorities to demand her release. Underlying the light-hearted story is a satiric comment on man's servitude to the clock.5 women, 7 men

A sly, gentle dig at society's conventions and preconceptions. John Brown arrives at a country nursing home with a case of money expecting hotel-style service. He's a kind of dropout bound to puzzle a profession geared to treating the sick. He's not physically ill and apparently not mentally so. He settles into the routine and cocoon-like security. Everyone speculates as to his identity.4 women, 2 men

Comedy / 14m, 2f, 12 extras, 6 musicians / Unit set w. platforms, cyc, drops.Winner of both the Tony and NY Drama Critics Circle awards. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are the college chums of Hamlet and their story is what happened behind the scenes in Shakespeare's play. What were they doing there in Elsinore anyway? "I don't know; we were sent for." They are not only anti agents, but also anti sympathy, anti identification, and in fact anti persons, which is uniquely demonstrated by their having such a hard time recollecting which of them goes by what name. The Players come and go; Prince Hamlet comes through reading words, words, words; foul deeds are done; Hamlet is sent abroad, escapes death; and in turn Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find their "only exit is death." "Very funny, very brilliant, very chilling; it has the dust of thought about it and the particles glitter excitingly in the theatrical air." - The New York Times"A stimulating, funny, imaginative comedy." - The New York Daily News

Albert has a degree in philosophy and with a job as bridge painter has a new perspective on life up high. Through CPSs and programmed efficiency, he replaces four painters and the bridge is all his. He also has to get married - but that's another story. He's bothered by a reluctant suicide and by 1400 additional painters causing the bridge and Albert's dream to collapse.2 women, 10 men

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead is a play which, as it were, takes place in the wings of Hamlet, and finds both humour and poignancy in the situation of the ill-fated attendant lords. The National Theatre production in April 1967 made Tom Stoppard's reputation virtually overnight. Its wit, stagecraft and verbal verve remain as exhilarating as they were then and the play has become a contemporary classic.