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The Bérenger Plays book cover
The Bérenger Plays
2019
First Published
4.06
Average Rating
288
Number of Pages

This collection brings together the four plays that feature Ionesco's everyman protagonist Jean Bérenger. In The Killer, he comes across a radiant city, an ideal civilization which is being terrorized by a killer, whom he tries to help apprehend. In Rhinoceros, he is the only person in a provincial town who is not affected by a condition that turns its victims into the eponymous horned beast. In Exit the King, he is the powerful King Bérenger the First, who refuses to accept that he is dying. And in A Stroll in the Air he acquires the capacity of flight and sees another world lying beyond the clouds. While each play in the Bérenger cycle is unique, they are all prime examples of Ionesco's conception of the theatre of the absurd, and touch on themes that preoccupied the author throughout his career, such as mortality, alienation, freedom and the evils of Fascism. This volume constitutes a perfect introduction to one of the twentieth century's most original and influential playwrights.

Avg Rating
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Author

Eugene Ionesco
Eugene Ionesco
Author · 43 books

Eugène Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu, was a Romanian playwright and dramatist; one of the foremost playwrights of the Theatre of the Absurd. Beyond ridiculing the most banal situations, Ionesco's plays depict in a tangible way the solitude and insignificance of human existence. Excerpted from Wikipedia.

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