The Father [Paperback]

Mike Poulton (Adapter), August Strindberg (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1854599410 | ISBN-13: 978-1854599414 | Publication Date: April 1, 2007

Laura and Adolf have a daughter, Bertha, whom they both wish to claim as their own. Laura tells Adolf that he cannot be sure he is her real father. Wrestling with this thought, driven mad by Laura’s malice and finally betrayed even by Bertha, Adolf is last seen being strapped into a straitjacket.

Editorial Reviews

Review

THE FATHER still has the power to astonish. Richard Nelson's new adaptation of the Swedish text speaks in clean, spare English prose, the kind that remains discreetly outside time without betraying the conventions of the period when the play was written (1887).... It's not exactly news to report that THE FATHER is an extraordinary play. The news is that its ability to shock remains undiminished as, in the course of twenty-four hours, the increasingly chilly, twenty-year marriage of the Captain and the willful Laura escalates into a war to the death. We are deep in territory that Ingmar Bergman would later explore, though never with quite such harrowing results. ...Mr Nelson's excellent adaptation. --Vincent Canby, The New York Times --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

August Strindberg (1849-1912) is best-known for his misogyny and as the author of Miss Julie (1889). His first success came as a novelist and autobiographer. His plays (and he wrote over sixty) were deeply controversial in their time and still are to some extent. They range form bold naturalism (e.g. The father, 1887) to an entralling expressionism (e.g. The Ghost Sonata, 1907). Mike Poulton has a string of successful translations and adaptations to his name, most notably Turgenev's "Fortune's Fool" (which won a Tony Award) and Schiller's "Don Carlos", which played for several months in the West End earlier in the year.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books (April 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1854599410
• ISBN-13: 978-1854599414
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,652,518 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars August Strindberg's "The Father", January 27, 2010

By 

David King "littlebrit" (Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Father (Dover Thrift Editions) (Paperback)

It's a fascinating play, laying bare the relationships, at that time, between the sexes. Chilling in its portrayals. If you're a man and about to get married - don't read this!

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Father, a masterpiece..., December 28, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Father (Paperback)

After writing the Red Room and several other wonderful books, Father is really one of Strindberg's most fantastic work. It is stunning how a person can describe human beings in the way Strindberg does, or did, since he past away over 80 years ago... Just buy it and read it.

5 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fadren -- Fadrentastic!, September 13, 2000

By 

David-Michael-Pittichimaccio (Tsawwassen, British Columbia, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Father (Oberon Classics Hardback Serie) (Paperback)

Naturalistic fiction has never been so stripped,
a choking ibsenomaic portion;
precocial nautch that grows as it goes.
Strindberg's stronger wiccecræft stronger.

Worth witenagemot!©