Eugene Ionesco - Plays - Volume 10 - Oh What a Bloody Circus & The Hardboiled Egg

This tenth volume of collected plays by Eugene Ionesco contains an important long play 'Oh What a Bloody Circus' (French title: 'Ce Formidable Bordel') and 'The Hard Boiled Egg' ('L'oeuf dur') - the last product of M. Ionesco's long interest in the symbolism of eggs.

Both are translated by Donald Watson, whose successful association with the playwright goes back to the days when Ionesco first exploded onto the Parisian theatre scene - as a new avant-garde creator of a drama that jettisoned tired theatrical conventions and repalced them with a dazzling series of verbal and situational paradoxes, contradictions and absurdities. Regarded as one of the greatest European playwrights of the 20th century and the father of more than one generation of successors, Eugene Ionesco' work can still startle, shock and amuse

The publishers have thought it suitable, in this tenth volume, to include a postface by Donald Watson, based on a lecture given in Cardiff on the occasion of Ionesco's visit to Wales in October 1974 to receive the first International Writers Prize to be awarded there. Donald Watson discusses the reaction of the English Press to Ionesco's plays and reveals some curious inconsistencies and paradoxes