鈥淎rt has a lot to answer for.鈥 So says Sarah Bernhardt in Ronald Harwood鈥檚 play After the Lions. Harwood鈥檚 own career can be summarized by that same quote as well.
Ronald Harwood鈥檚 Tragic Vision offers the first critical analysis of prolific and award-winning British author Ronald Harwood (1934鈥2020). Though he received an Oscar for The Pianist, a knighthood, and numerous other awards and nominations, Harwood worked as a ghostwriter, script doctor, and veritable unknown for many years. As he became successful, many critics still misread his works and positioned him as a less-fashionable counterpart to his lifelong friend Harold Pinter. This study proposes a conceptual framework to approach his, and others鈥, work based on the genre of tragedy, offering a greater appreciation for and understanding of the Harwood canon.
鈥淎s a survey of Ronald Harwood鈥檚 oeuvre, this book faces little to no competition. It clearly fills a gap in the market. Ann Hall鈥檚 book ambitiously attempts a selective synopsis of the plots of seven novels, sixteen plays, and eight screenplays.鈥濃擯eter Lawson, author, Anglo-Jewish Poetry from Isaac Rosenberg to Elaine Feinstein
鈥淩elying upon interviews with Harwood as well as detailed readings of his works, Ann Hall highlights the multifaceted nature of his cultural imprint, which includes his membership in the 鈥榰nfashionable鈥 theatre set, his crafting of tragic figures across all three genres, his political writing as a Jew and a South African condemning oppression, especially Nazism and apartheid, and his exclusive focus on adaptation in his film scripts.鈥濃擶illiam C. Boles, author, Mike Bartlett
鈥淎nn Hall capably knits together the various strands of Harwood鈥檚 oeuvre with a compelling focus on what she defines as his 鈥榯ragic vision,鈥 identified primarily in his construction of flawed or complex lead characters, often outsiders to their own social environments, who are nobly facing adverse or compromising conditions, or addressing their own inner conflicts. Though the emphasis is on the tragic, a rich undercurrent of humor is celebrated as a key component of the author鈥檚 voice. What emerges from this highly readable study is a very clear set of patterns in Harwood鈥檚 writing including nuanced autobiographical impulses, the thrall of totalitarian regimes, the horror of the Holocaust, the dignity of Jewish community, and the iniquitous persistence of antisemitic sentiment, and, perhaps most importantly, the role of art as an enduring civilizing force, as a force of resistance in an exigent world.鈥濃擬ark Taylor-Batty, University of Leeds
