Six Characters in Search of an Author

by Luigi Pirandello, Eric Bentley (Translator)

Winner of the Nobel Prize in 1934, Luigi Pirandello was one of the most original and powerful dramatists of his time - the playwright par excellence of the conflict between illusion and reality. His plays dramatize with force and eloquence the loneliness and isolation of the individual both from society and from himself.

In Six Characters in Search of an Author, his greatest work, these themes are played out with characteristic brilliance. First performed in 1921, the play concerns six living characters - family members embroiled in their own human drama - who come to a theater and demand that the maneger of his actors stage their life story. Filled with both humor and despair, Six Characters in Search of an Author is Pirandello's most extraordinary achievement - as it explores the fundamentally absurd and tragic nature of the human condition.

This new Signet Classic edition includes an introduction by Eric Bentley, the widely acclaimed writer, translator, and international theater authority.

Genres: Plays, Classics, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Italian Literature, Italy

82 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 9, 1921

About the author

Luigi Pirandello; Agrigento (28 June 1867 – Rome 10 December 1936) was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet, and short story writer whose greatest contributions were his plays.

He was awarded the 1934 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his bold and ingenious revival of dramatic and scenic art"

Pirandello's works include novels, hundreds of short stories, and about 40 plays, some of which are written in Sicilian. Pirandello's tragic farces are often seen as forerunners of the Theatre of the Absurd.