David Rabe – författare

The first collection in the UK by a major American dramatist Containing Rabe's "Vietnam Trilogy", all four plays in this collection focus on what the author calls 'The Eternal Human pageant.' In THE BASIC TRAINING OF PAVLO HUMMEL (which starred Al Pacino), a young recruit is gradually brutalised, STICKS AND BONES deals with the issue of mixed race partnerships during the war and STREAMERS portrays the absurdity of violence through the characters of two sergeants. Also included is THE ORPHAN, Rabe's version of THE ORESTEIA. In Rabe's vision the American dream has tipped over into a furious nightmare in which war is not just a political phenomenon but an elemental force, like love or death."The fast explosive dialogue of which Rabe is a master" Sunday Times "Rabe sees in modern America a cosmic despair" Guardian "David Rabe is remarkable storyteller" Chicago Tribune

Longing and confusion. Hearts pounding, time ticking away. Early 1960s in a Midwestern town. Danny Mueller's working class life is one of fierce loyalty to childhood friends, Jake and Terry. But the bigger world is stirring once he meets Karen, back from college in the east and alluring because of what she knows, and unsettling for that same reason. The grip of Danny's past is intensified by his father, a German immigrant mourning a vanished world of lost prestige. For Pop the question is how to let go of a son and life he never quite had now that the future has shrunk to almost nothing. While Danny hopes to change without betraying the bonds that have sustained him, Karen, a whirl of brilliance, looks to J.D. Salinger for answers and to Danny for a simplicity he does not possess. To fall in love, to have a destiny, to know what it is. That's what they all want, even Benji hanging onto Pop, and Shirley, too, adrift in a way she could not have foreseen. old look backward and the young look ahead, while we watch from the future they long to inhabit. And it's all about to burn in the heat of whatever's coming. The way it always does.

In Danny Looks Back based on Rabe's short story "Things We Worried About When I Was Ten" an adult Danny Matz ruminates on his childhood worries: schoolyard bullies, boxing the downstairs neighbor, and missing the night crawlers that come out after a heavy rain. Danny's remembrances reflect worries that continue into adulthood, touching on struggles of the working class, fear of uncertainty, and internalized guilt and shame.In The Burning Ship, adapted from Rabe's short story "Suffocation Theory," an unnamed narrator describes the nightmare world crumbling around him. As the TV blares news of ecological collapse, shootings, and war, the man's immediate surroundings grow equally sinister, threatening to turn his concern into paranoia, and his self-preservation into violence.

David Rabe is one of America's finest dramatists. In A Question of Mercy, he explores the controversial and emotional issue of euthanasia, delving deep into the ties that bind friends and lovers. Thomas and Anthony are lovers struggling with Anthony's final, exhausting battle with AIDS. Joined by their friend Susanah and a retired doctor, whose help Thomas has requested , they fashion a heartbreaking friendship as they work through the stages of a plan to relieve Anthony of his illness and his life. Rabe creates a passionate depiction of four people confronted with the reality of a loved one's fight with death, and a compelling dramatic event that poses the question: "What would you do?"

The author of Hurlyburly again explores the struggle between hope and anguish in the human spirit in this story of two small-time jewel thieves united in a strangely unsettling friendship and the constant fight to prove to themselves and others how tough they are. But when their frantic scheming suddenly begins to betray them in mysterious ways, they find themselves trapped into a kidnapping and a murder over which they seem to have no control. Or do they? David Rabe's language creates and re-creates reality in constantly surprising ways, magically dramatizing the danger of the power of illusion-and the illusion of power-with force and insight.

In Dinosaurs on the Roof, acclaimed author and playwright David Rabe delivers a singular work that reaffirms his extraordinary range and talent, and introduces a story and a collection of characters whose genuine audacity will echo with readers for years to come. In the town of Belger, Iowa, recently divorced Janet Cawley is attempting to find some peace and quiet, and perhaps a solitary place where she can finally fall apart. She''s quit her job teaching fourth grade, though with the money she has, she will probably get along fine for another six months. She still needs to extricate herself from an affair with an ex-colleague that has the neighbors talking, but after that she can spend her time alone, jogging, drinking, and making the occasional trip into town. Her plans are interrupted one morning by the sudden appearance of her now-deceased mother''s oldest friend, Bernice, who has an urgent matter to discuss. Bernice''s preacher, it seems, has informed his congregation that they are to be visited by the Rapture that very evening -- and Bernice''s first question, and most pressing fear, is how her dogs and cats will be fed and cared for after she''s gone. Through that night and into the next, the lives of these two women will become inextricably woven together as they struggle to find reason in the incomprehensible and sometimes ludicrous events that unfold, and search for tangible signs of faith in themselves and the world around them. Dinosaurs on the Roof is a magnificent novel that speaks volumes about spirituality in the twenty-first century and explores the intimate, everyday gestures of the strangers closest to us with unforgettable humor and remarkable humanity.

The Black Monk has been called a singular "collaboration" between two writers: Anton Chekhov and David Rabe. Based on Chekov's novella of the same name, Rabe's brilliant stage adaptation tells the story of Kovrin, the young philosophy student who returns from Moscow to the estate owned by Pesotsky, where he spent his youth. Kovrin and Pesotsky's daughter, Tanya, soon fall in love and plan to marry. But the appearance of an emissary from the unknown -- the black monk -- threatens to have a devastating effect on all of them. Trouble starts in when Teresa tells her brother Joey that this guy Ray did something to her with his dog in bed. Nobody seems to know exactly what happened, but they do know that somebody's got to pay. So what is The Dog Problem? It starts with being born into a world where the wrong thing said to the wrong person ignites a chain reaction of misplaced passions and galloping sentences that race to a deadly conclusion. The playful title is revealed to be a wry pun on the Cartesian mind/body problem, as Uncle Mal, the aging mobster, must face his turn to be the dog in this darkly funny play about men, women, sex, betrayal, and ghosts. Vastly different in their aesthetic, these two recent and highly praised plays embody all of the celebrated hallmarks of David Rabe's writing and art: unflinchingly honest and perceptive themes, starkly luminous dialogue, and the unsettling humor that have made him an icon of the American theater for more than forty years.

David Rabe’s award-winning Vietnam plays have come to embody our collective fears, doubts, and tenuous grasp of a war that continues to haunt. Partially written upon his return from the war, Girl by the Road at Night is Rabe’s first work of fiction set in Vietnam—a spare and poetic narrative about a young soldier embarking on a tour of duty and the Vietnamese prostitute he meets in country.Private Joseph Whitaker, with Vietnam deployment papers in hand, spends his last free weekend in Washington, DC, drinking, attending a peace rally, and visiting an old girlfriend, now married. He observes his surroundings closely, attempting to find reason in an atmosphere of hysteria and protest, heightened by his own anger. When he arrives in Vietnam, he happens upon Lan, a local girl who submits nightly to the American GIs with a heartbreaking combination of decency and guile. Her family dispersed and her father dead, she longs for a time when life meant riding in water buffalo carts through rice fields with her brother. Whitaker’s chance encounter with Lan sparks an unexpected, almost unrecognized, visceral longing between two people searching for companionship and tenderness amid the chaos around them.In transformative prose, Rabe has created an atmosphere charged with exquisite poignancy and recreated the surreal netherworld of Vietnam in wartime with unforgettable urgency and grace. Girl by the Road at Night is a brilliant meditation on disillusionment, sexuality, and masculinity, and one of Rabe’s finest works to date.

The Black Monk has been called a singular "collaboration" between two writers: Anton Chekhov and David Rabe. Based on Chekov''s novella of the same name, Rabe''s brilliant stage adaptation tells the story of Kovrin, the young philosophy student who returns from Moscow to the estate owned by Pesotsky, where he spent his youth. Kovrin and Pesotsky''s daughter, Tanya, soon fall in love and plan to marry. But the appearance of an emissary from the unknown -- the black monk -- threatens to have a devastating effect on all of them. Trouble starts in when Teresa tells her brother Joey that this guy Ray did something to her with his dog in bed. Nobody seems to know exactly what happened, but they do know that somebody''s got to pay. So what is The Dog Problem? It starts with being born into a world where the wrong thing said to the wrong person ignites a chain reaction of misplaced passions and galloping sentences that race to a deadly conclusion. The playful title is revealed to be a wry pun on the Cartesian mind/body problem, as Uncle Mal, the aging mobster, must face his turn to be the dog in this darkly funny play about men, women, sex, betrayal, and ghosts. Vastly different in their aesthetic, these two recent and highly praised plays embody all of the celebrated hallmarks of David Rabe''s writing and art: unflinchingly honest and perceptive themes, starkly luminous dialogue, and the unsettling humor that have made him an icon of the American theater for more than forty years.

Four stories (three of which appeared in the New Yorker) and a novella bring wit, compassion, and dizzying absurdity to facing life and death across generations. In “Things We Worried About When I Was Ten,” carefree boys running in apparent midwestern freedom are revealed to be as uncared for by their overburdened parents as they are carefree. “The Longer Grief” is a slow-motion explosion, as one moment in time propels shards of reckoning through a brother and sister, their shared history, and those they hold dear. In “Uncle Jim Called,” a man cooking stir fry answers his ringing phone to find the dead calling. “Suffocation Theory” slyly depicts our off-kilter and increasingly apocalyptic world. In the novella, “I have to Tell You,” Emma, nearing eighty, along with other elderly tenants in her midwestern apartment complex, seeks fairness from a conniving landlord. When an emergency stay in the hospital brings her face to face with looming injustice, she finds herself suddenly burdened with two mysteries to solve. She may never get to the end of them, but she is determined to do all she can, and maybe more than anyone expected. These stories show the author in top form as an incisive chronicler of the torments, pathos, and sometimes joys of being human. They are full of bite, wit, and ingenuity, and like all his classic work, they are powerful and timely. “Suffocation Theory,” appeared in the October 12th, 2020 issue of the New Yorker. The New Yorker published two other stories, “Uncle Jim Called” and “Things We Worried About When I Was Ten,” the latter a winner of the 2021 O. Henry Prize and is included in the most recent O. Henry collection, published in September 2021 and edited by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. The story “The Longer Grief” was awarded a first prize in the Narrative Story Contest (August 2019).

David Rabe, the Tony award-winning playwright of Hurlyburly and In the Boom Boom Room, brings his intense vision to the world of fiction, with a short story collection of astonishing range and versatility. Whether he is writing about a marriage shadowed by the unacknowledged discord of a risky pregnancy, a group of men whose attempt to settle an account launches them toward unexpected violence, or a young journalist who believes he’s escaped his Catholic roots only to be forced again to confront them by a priest who once mentored his writing, Rabe’s strong, true voice tenders an inimitable portrait of America and offers benediction to her lost souls. A Primitive Heart confirms the mastery of a writer and establishes David Rabe as an exciting voice in fiction.