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The Prisoner's Dilemma
Starting with international peace brokers playing simulation games on a university campus, David Edgar's intensely political play spirals upward and outward to present a situation of real conflict over bloodily unresolvable life-and-death issues.
128 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
About the author
David Edgar
93 books18 followersDavid Edgar is an English playwright. He was born in Birmingham into a family with longstanding links to the theatre. His father and mother both acted at the Birmingham Rep before moving into broadcasting, and by the age of five Edgar had written his first play and performed it in a 12 seat theatre his father built for him in his back garden.
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ed...
From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Ed...
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 30, 2008
I got to know this book at a University translation course (I had the pleasure to translate a few chapters and to meet the author who come to Pisa for the first performance of his work tranlsated in Italian).
The subject of the book is the 1995 diplomatic negotiations between Bosnian, Serb and Croat leaders and although I am not so informed on this topic I really appreciated the way David Edgar deals with it. He focuses on the human aspects of the political negotiations, bringing to light both the violent and combative side of the people involved but also their weakness and hidden uncertainties.
The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game which is very popular in diplomacy and it is played normally by two people ot two parties when they are arrested and interrogated separately whitout the possibility to communicate with each other. In this situation the two prisoners are left alone with the choice to cooperate with the police or to be loyal to his comrade, with the following conseguences:if one of them cooperates with the police and the other doesn't, the former receives a very light sentence, and the latter a heavy one.If both decide to cooperate, both will receive heavy sentences. If neither talks,they will each receive moderate sentences.
The same choice of the title points out the attention of the author to the psychological side of the interactions between the two parties in the negotiations.
The subject of the book is the 1995 diplomatic negotiations between Bosnian, Serb and Croat leaders and although I am not so informed on this topic I really appreciated the way David Edgar deals with it. He focuses on the human aspects of the political negotiations, bringing to light both the violent and combative side of the people involved but also their weakness and hidden uncertainties.
The Prisoner's Dilemma is a game which is very popular in diplomacy and it is played normally by two people ot two parties when they are arrested and interrogated separately whitout the possibility to communicate with each other. In this situation the two prisoners are left alone with the choice to cooperate with the police or to be loyal to his comrade, with the following conseguences:if one of them cooperates with the police and the other doesn't, the former receives a very light sentence, and the latter a heavy one.If both decide to cooperate, both will receive heavy sentences. If neither talks,they will each receive moderate sentences.
The same choice of the title points out the attention of the author to the psychological side of the interactions between the two parties in the negotiations.
Displaying 1 of 1 review