The Piano Lesson and Joe Turner’s Come and Gone: August Wilson

Published by Penguin, 228 pages. The Piano Lesson was first published in 1986. Joe Turner's Come and Gone was first published in 1984. (Note: the dates of first publication are not clear; these may not be accurate.) These two plays form part of August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle, a series of 10 plays, each set in …

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A Raisin in the Sun: Lorraine Hansberry

Published by Signet, Vintage and Berkley Books, 1959, 144 pages. “What happens to a dream deferred?Does it dry upLike a raisin in the sun?”–Langston Hughes      This is a powerful play about an African-American family trying to realize their dreams in spite of the odds stacked against them. At the centre of the play is the …

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Rock ‘n’ Roll: Tom Stoppard

Published by Faber and Faber, 2006, 144 pages. This is Tom Stoppard’s play about Czechoslovakia, protest, love, and the power of rock and roll. It covers the years from 1968 to 1990, and the action moves between the house of Max—a staunch communist and a member of the British Communist Party—in Cambridge and the apartment …

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Under Milk Wood: Dylan Thomas

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1954, 160 pages. “To begin at the beginning. It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and- rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.” Thus begins one of my favourite books, a book of …

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Harry Potter and the Cursed Child—JK Rowling, John Thorne and John Tiffany

Published by Sphere, 2016, 352 pages. So you thought we’d come to the end of the Harry Potter story…well, think again. JK Rowling, with some help this time, has written another instalment. This one takes place 19 years after the events of the last Potter book, and the plot revolves around Harry’s second son, Albus …

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