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Product Description
Product Description
This volume deals with prison life and the injustices suffered by the prisoners.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
About the Author
Harold Pinter was born in London in 1930. He lived with Antonia Fraser from 1975 and they married in 1980. In 1995 he won the David Cohen British Literature Prize, awarded for a lifetime's achievement in literature. In 1996 he was given the Laurence Olivier Award for a lifetime's achievement in theatre. In 2002 he was made a Companion of Honour for services to literature. In 2005 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature and, in the same year, the Wilfred Owen Award for Poetry and the Franz Kafka Award (Prague). In 2006 he was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize and, in 2007, the highest French honour, the Légion d'honneur. He died in December 2008.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This play was a sensation on its opening in London. It ran for 25 minutes only, a unique duration for a major play. It portrays a society where totaliarianism has reached its most severe form. Citizens of the country are forbidden to speak their native language, and are imprisoned for the most minor infringements of regulations. Most of the atmosphere is conveyed by recorded sounds, iron gates clanging, helicopters overhead, attack dogs howling, shouts and screams. It's one of Pinter's densest plays, a work of unrelieved terror and hopelessness
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I was first introduced to this particular script in my first year of sixth form college, and immediately fell in love with it. Though it is a short piece, measuring in at just over 20 minutes in length, the pace is perfect, and the entire play leaves us wanting to know more - but this is certainly not a bad thing. It is shocking and disturbing, and also confusing, and its absurd nature makes sure that no two performances can possibly be the same.
The script comes with lists of props, lighting and effects, which are minimal. Again, this is no bad thing, and it gives directors a lot of space to play around with.
I would have greatly appreciated any more notes on the staging of the play, and photographs would have been useful. A little extra detail would not have been necessary, but neither would it have gone amiss.
The script comes with lists of props, lighting and effects, which are minimal. Again, this is no bad thing, and it gives directors a lot of space to play around with.
I would have greatly appreciated any more notes on the staging of the play, and photographs would have been useful. A little extra detail would not have been necessary, but neither would it have gone amiss.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
3 reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Perhaps Pinter's most successful political play
5 Oct 2005
Format:Paperback
Harold Pinter's MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE is a short play in four scenes inspired by the oppression of the Kurds in Turkey. As the play begins, we see a group of women waiting all day through snowfall and intimidation by dogs to visit their imprisoned husbands and sons, . Pinter's "political" plays have always explored how individuals and governments exercise power over their fellow man, and here Pinter concentrates on how oppressive regimes have broken the spirits of minorities by banning their language:
"OFFICER: Your language is dead. It is forbidden. It is not permitted to speak your mountain language in this place. You cannot speak your language to your men. It is not permitted. Do you understand? You may not speak it. It is outlawed. You may only speak the language of the capital... Your language is forbidden.. It is dead. No one is allowed to speak your language. Your language no longer exists. Any questions?"
This prohibition continues even in the case of an elderly woman who does not speak the "language of the capital". She cannot communicate with her son in the prisoner because her language is banned and she has no other means. The third scene, where a woman is sent through the wrong door and sees her husband hooded and shackled and realizes that sleeping with the commandant is the only way to save her husband, is especially unnerving.
MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE has the same absurdist tendencies and odd turns of phrase as Pinter's other political plays, such as "Precisely" and "Party Time", but on the whole is one of his most successful works.
"OFFICER: Your language is dead. It is forbidden. It is not permitted to speak your mountain language in this place. You cannot speak your language to your men. It is not permitted. Do you understand? You may not speak it. It is outlawed. You may only speak the language of the capital... Your language is forbidden.. It is dead. No one is allowed to speak your language. Your language no longer exists. Any questions?"
This prohibition continues even in the case of an elderly woman who does not speak the "language of the capital". She cannot communicate with her son in the prisoner because her language is banned and she has no other means. The third scene, where a woman is sent through the wrong door and sees her husband hooded and shackled and realizes that sleeping with the commandant is the only way to save her husband, is especially unnerving.
MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE has the same absurdist tendencies and odd turns of phrase as Pinter's other political plays, such as "Precisely" and "Party Time", but on the whole is one of his most successful works.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Buried Language
29 Mar 2000
Format:Paperback
While the theater of the absurd is often regarded as distant and alienating for readers, it often carries the most profound examinations of social and historical flaws. MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE, by Harold Pinter, is a ruthlessly bitter and comic examination of the conditions of prisons where men and women are treated without regard as if they weren't part of the human race at all. In a broader context, it examines human separatism and our readiness to ignore the similarities between ourselves and other people. Through its disturbingly nonsensical dialogue, it becomes a harsh criticism of the human condition, that we are so unwilling to embrace all of mankind. MOUNTAIN LANGUAGE is a small treasure, one of the great pieces of absurd drama.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Powerful indictment of language police
28 July 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This book, which I had read before (I gave my copy to a friend and so ordered a new one), is a short, terse, and very powerful testament to the cruelty of interfering with the language rights of others. I read somewhere that Pinter got the idea from an incident in Turkey--the same one that led to the establishment of International Mother Language Day in February. I think every two-bit "English Only" enthusiast in this country should read this book, if they're able to.
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