A moving testament to modern literature's most celebrated marriage: that of the greatest playwright of our age, Harold Pinter, and the beautiful and famous prize-winning biographer, Antonia Fraser. In this exquisite memoir, Antonia Fraser recounts the life she shared with the internationally renowned dramatist. In essence, it is a love story and a marvelously insightful account of their years together. Must You Go? is based on Fraser's recollections and on the diaries she has kept since October 1968. She shares Pinter's own revelations about his past, as well as observations by his friends.

Presents selections of the work of playwright Harold Pinter. Includes key plays, poetry, and the 2005 Nobel Prize in Literature lecture.

THE STORY: A husband goes to his office politely asking if his wife's lover will be coming today. She murmurs 'Mmmm,' and suggests he not return before six. In order not to return before six he will no doubt visit a prostitute. A competition is glossily established. When the lover does come, he is the husband, which is not surprising. The kind of sex-play follows that suggests this is the necessary titillation, and the necessary release ofhostility, between a man who means to be master of the house and a wife who means to be both wife and mistress, whatever the house may be. But there is a flaw in the accommodation. The lover is weary of his mistress; she is no longer particularly appetizing. By the time he returns, as husband, in the evening, his wife is still disturbed by the news. The performance of the afternoon has begun to carry over into the reality (or pretense) of the evening. Suddenly the husband is not quite husband, diffident over his drink. He is blurring into the lover, at the wrong hour, and angrily. The wife must seduce him now as wife, not as mistress. She does. -NY Herald-Tribune.

“A fascinating work . . . possessing extraordinary power. Masterful.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Brilliant, cranky, and eccentric, and the narrative passages are some of the most thrilling ever written.” —Library Journal “Some of the author’s most enduring themes—notably, sexual jealousy and betrayal—are present. . . . The narration shows traces of writers as various as Joyce and Beckett, e.e. cummings and J.P. Donleavy.” —The Washington Post “The Abbott and Costello meet Samuel Beckett dialogue . . . makes you laugh out loud.” —The Village Voice

This first full-length book on Pinter goes beyond an introductory study to an examination of the isolation characters in his plays endure and the lack of communication they bear. Dealing with Pinter's principal works, from his first play, The Room (1957), through his most recent, Silence (1969), Hollis shows that Pinter has created a new poetic, in which the real presence, silence, communicates--reflecting fears of real people searching for basic human needs.

Updated edition of this popular Companion examining the wide range of Pinter's work, and his continuing impact and influence.