William Saroyan – författare

"Marvelously captivating." — The New York Times. First published in 1940, Saroyan's international bestseller recounts the exploits of an Armenian clan in northern California at the turn of the 20th century. Based on the author's loving and eccentric extended family, the characters in these 14 related short stories provide humorous and touching scenes from immigrant life.

A Lost Great American Master: meet Jack Kerouac's inspiration in these heart-expanding tales of immigrant life in 1930s USA, introduced by superfan Stephen Fry.JACK KEROUAC: 'I loved him ... He just got me'ARTHUR MILLER: 'The first to let it all hang out and write like a child in wonderland.'KURT VONNEGUT: 'Still the greatest.'JOSEPH HELLER: 'My primary inspiration.'STEPHEN FRY: 'One of the most underrated writers of the century.'I hadn't had a haircut in forty days and forty nights, and I was beginning to look like several violinists out of work.Depression-era San Francisco, home to the lost souls of many races: immigrants, struggling writers and heartsick adolescents, collecting in automats, nightschools, movies and barbershops, working in vineyards, telegram exchanges and as salesmen - and always revelling in being alive.A bestseller on publication in 1934, The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze was the debut collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning (and rejecting) Armenian-American writer William Saroyan. Fusing Whitman's transcendence with the eccentric characterisation of Steinbeck and Salinger, and foreshadowing the rhapsodies of the Beats, his prose is a heart-expanding experience that intoxicates to this day.

Fantasy William Saroyan Flexible cast. Simple sets. Mr. Saroyan has shown with considerable beauty, humor, and dramatic effect the dreams of some of the people who ride in a metropolitan subway.

Gathered in The Man with the Heart in the Highlands are sixteen stories from William Saroyan’s most celebrated literary period, culled from several long out-of-print collections from the 1930s and ’40s, While achieving meteoric success with The Human Comedy and The Time of Your Life, the young Saroyan set the pace with characters as fresh and compassionate as himself. His voice here is exhilarating, luminous, and completely distinctive––ready to let go with a lusty brash laugh on every page. These stories amply bear out Elizabeth Bowen’s opinion that “probably since O. Henry nobody has done more to endear and stabilize the short story.”

A timeless selection of brilliant short stories that won William Saroyan a position among the foremost, most widely popular writers of America when it first appeared in 1934.With the greatest of ease William Saroyan flew across the literary skies in 1934 with the publication of The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze and Other Stories. One of the first American writers to describe the immigrant experience in the U.S., Saroyan created characters who were Armenians, Jews, Chinese, Poles, Africans, and the Irish. The title story touchingly portrays the thoughts of a very young writer, dying of starvation. All of the tales were written during the great depression and reflect, through pathos and humor, the mood of the nation in one of its greatest times of want.

A programme text edition published in conjunction with the Finborough Theatre to coincide with the centenary of the birth of William Saroyan, The Time of Your Life runs from 26 November - 20 December. 'In the time of our life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite delight and mystery of it' The Time of Your Life, a rich tapestry of human life, peopled by a profusion of wistful dreamers, pining lonely hearts, and beer-hall-philosophers, is a twentieth century American masterpiece. The Time of Your Life was first presented at The Shubert Theatre, New Haven, USA, on 7 October 1939. It was the first play to win both the New York Drama Critics' Circle award and the Pulitzer Prize. . It has been revived three times on Broadway; was filmed in 1948, starring James Cagney; and twice filmed for TV. It was last seen in the UK in a star-studded Royal Shakespeare Company production in Stratford and London in 1983, and received the following review: 'A remarkable play which blazes forth like a brave beacon: warming and full of fire' Daily Mail

A collection of short stories that were originally published in the 1960s and 1970s in The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, and Harper's.

Selected from New Directions' collections of Saroyan's early stories (The Man With the Heart In the Highlands) and his later work (Madness In the Family), Fresno Stories spans his whole remarkable career.