Harold Pinter: A Study of Cultural Memory

Harold Pinter, a Nobel Prize-winning playwright, was renowned for voicing the fears, deformed sense of perception and anxiety that surfaced due to the past traumas of the Jewish community through his critically acclaimed works. Pinter’s early childhood memories of evacuation during the Jewish Holocaust later became an inseparable part of his memory plays. Harold Pinter: A Study of Cultural Memory contains remarkable revelations about Jewish memory, identity and Holocaust experiences under the umbrella term of cultural memory. It presents a dramatically altered, ugly trail of Holocaust memories of Jews and specifically reveals how they had been thrown out of mainstream society during the outbreak of World War II. By critically analysing his plays such as Old Times, No Man’s Land, Betrayal, Ashes to Ashes and Celebration, the book delves into the tragedy exhibited in Pinter’s drama through ellipses, echoes, silences and digressions. Comprehensive analyses and valuable insights on the genre of memory plays make it an ideal resource for students, researchers and teachers of literature.