Christopher Hampton is a distinguished British playwright, screenwriter, and film director celebrated for his masterful adaptations of literary works. His work on the stage adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses and its subsequent film version garnered significant acclaim, as did his screenplay for Atonement. Hampton's writing often delves into themes of adolescence and identity, drawing from personal experience to explore complex human relationships and psychological nuances with a distinctive voice.
Or a hysterical night of name-calling, tantrums and tears before bedtime?Boys will be boys, but the adults are usually worse - much worse. Christopher Hampton's translation of Yasmina Reza's sharp-edged new play The God of Carnage premiered at the Gielgud Theatre, London, in March 2008.
This brilliantly constructed, witty and sophisticated comedy of manners, first seen at the Royal Court with Alec McCowen and Jane Asher in 1970, has been revised for this edition by the author. The play revolves around a couple of days in the life of a bachelor don who is on the point of getting married, and the consequences of a dinner party he gives which cause turmoil and recriminations in the lives of his guests. Reviewing the original production in the Sunday Times, Harold Hobson described it as '...a wonderful evening, intellectually stimulating, touvhingly sympathetic and gloriously, gloriously funny.'
The complex moral ambiguities of seduction and revenge make Les Liaisons dangereuses (1782) one of the most scandalous and controversial novels in European literature. Its prime movers, the Vicomte de Valmont and the Marquise de Merteuil--gifted, wealthy, and bored--form an unholy alliance and turn seduction into a game. And they play this game with such wit and style that it is impossible not to admire them, until they discover mysterious rules that they cannot understand. In the ensuing battle there can be no winners, and the innocent suffer with the guilty. This new translation gives Laclos a modern voice, and readers will be able to judge whether the novel is as "diabolical" and "infamous" as its critics have claimed, or whether it has much to tell us about a world we still inhabit. Douglas Parmee is Retired Fellow of Queen's College, Cambridge. He is the translator of Nana, Attack on the Mill (Zola) and A Sentimental Journey (Flaubert) for World's Classics. David Coward is Professor of French at the University of Leeds. He is the translator and editor of Maupassant, de Sade, and Dumas in World's Classics.
Les liaisons dangereuses