Poor Murderer: A Play
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
What happens when a man confesses to murder — not in a courtroom, but on a stage within a stage, blurring the boundaries between madness and theatrical truth? Poor Murderer is a gripping and intellectually dazzling play by Czech dramatist Pavel Kohout, set within the walls of a Tsarist-era Russian asylum, where a patient named Vasily Vasilyevich — a gifted actor — insists on performing a scene from Hamlet as proof of his sanity, only to draw his doctors, guards, and fellow inmates into a dangerous spiral of illusion and reality. Kohout, one of the most celebrated and politically courageous voices of Central European theatre, crafts a work that is at once a taut psychological thriller and a searing meditation on art, power, and the fine line between genius and madness. Written during the oppressive atmosphere of Communist Czechoslovakia, the play carries unmistakable allegorical weight, interrogating how authoritarian systems define and confine human expression. Translated with vivid precision by Herbert Berghof and Laurence Luckinbill, this edition brings Kohout's electrifying vision to English-speaking audiences — and leaves one wondering: if sanity is a performance, who truly holds the script?
Author: Pavel Kohout
Format: Hardback
Genre: Plays
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
What happens when a man confesses to murder — not in a courtroom, but on a stage within a stage, blurring the boundaries between madness and theatrical truth? Poor Murderer is a gripping and intellectually dazzling play by Czech dramatist Pavel Kohout, set within the walls of a Tsarist-era Russian asylum, where a patient named Vasily Vasilyevich — a gifted actor — insists on performing a scene from Hamlet as proof of his sanity, only to draw his doctors, guards, and fellow inmates into a dangerous spiral of illusion and reality. Kohout, one of the most celebrated and politically courageous voices of Central European theatre, crafts a work that is at once a taut psychological thriller and a searing meditation on art, power, and the fine line between genius and madness. Written during the oppressive atmosphere of Communist Czechoslovakia, the play carries unmistakable allegorical weight, interrogating how authoritarian systems define and confine human expression. Translated with vivid precision by Herbert Berghof and Laurence Luckinbill, this edition brings Kohout's electrifying vision to English-speaking audiences — and leaves one wondering: if sanity is a performance, who truly holds the script?