Skillfully manipulating the conventions of vaudeville and farce, Georges Feydeau delighted Parisian audiences in the decades preceding World War I. Precisely staged, his plays are known for their wildly unlikely coincidences, mistaken identities, and misunderstandings. In addition, scholars find in his dramas an intellectual dimension generally absent in the works of other vaudevillian authors, and, although the farce has been replaced by other comedic forms... 

A notable dramatist of the Restoration period, George Farquhar was instrumental in reforming the theatrical practices of his age. For the most part, his most famous plays, The Recruiting Officer and The Beaux Stratagem, maintain the witty, vulgar, cynical, and amoral tone characteristic of Restoration drama, also known as comedy of manners. However, Farquhar’s work demonstrates a natural humor, warmth, and joy for life that the writing of his contemporaries... 

BORN: 1945, Baidoa, Somalia NATIONALITY: Somali GENRE: Fiction, drama MAJOR WORKS: From a Crooked Rib (1970) Sweet and Sour Milk (1979) Sardines (1981) Maps (1986) An important figure in contemporary African literature whose fiction is informed by his country’s turbulent history, Farah combines native legends, myths, and Islamic doctrines with a journalistic objectivity to comment on his country’s present autocratic government. His criticism of traditional... 

A political essayist from the Caribbean, Frantz Fanon is chiefly remembered for Les damne´s de la terre (The Wretched of the Earth, 1961), a collection of prose denouncing colonialism and racism in the third world. Although his proposal of using violence to obtain political liberation met with heavy criticism, Fanon has been praised as a direct and learned critic of racial, economic, and political injustice in the former colonies of Europe. Works in Biographical... 

Of the three poets of Greek tragedy whose work endures, Euripides is the one whose plays survive in the largest number (eighteen, in contrast to seven each for Aeschylus and Sophocles). His plays are notable for containing both tragic pathos and the nimble play of ideas. In antiquity, at least from the time shortly after his death about 407 or 406 BCE, Euripides was immensely popular and his dramas were performed wherever theaters existed. His influence continued... 

George Etherege had a gift for sharp and satiric social observation, but he also had an indulgent streak and an indifferent work ethic. He was one of the great British Restoration period dramatists. He had an expert touch with portraits of vain social show-offs, witty urban gentlemen on the make, and duplicitous young women plotting to get their man. In some ways, however, his greatest character was the persona he created for himself—a diplomat and gentleman... 

A best-selling, highly respected author in her native Mexico, Laura Esquivel’s first book Like Water for Chocolate (Como Agua Para Chocolate, 1991) was a crossover success, earning her an international reputation. Esquivel merges folk stories, magic realism, and a feminist perspective in her writing, garnering both popular and critical acclaim. Like Water for Chocolate was a best seller in the United States. Employing the brand of magic realism that Colombian...