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Caligula and Three Other Plays: A New Translation by Ryan Bloom Audiobook
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Publisher Description
Four thought-provoking masterworks for the theater by the Nobel Prize–winning author of The Stranger and The Plague, in a restorative new translation by Ryan Bloom that brings together, for the first time in English, Camus’s final versions of the plays, along with deleted scenes and alternate lines of dialogue.
Though known for his novels that plumb the depths of absurdism, it was the theater stage that Camus called “one of the only places in the world I’m happy.” After forming two troupes in his early twenties in Algeria, the prolific author moved to Paris for work, where between 1944–1949 he would go on to stage the four original plays gathered in this collection.
Caligula, his first full-length work for the stage, begins with the infamous Roman emperor in the throes of grief at the death of his sister Drusilla and tugs at the same essential question that haunts so much of Camus’s work: Faced with the nullifying force of time, which snuffs out even our grandest emotions, how does one go on living? And is there a limit to the hardness of the human heart?
Here too are The Misunderstanding, a murderous tangle of the longing for home and the longing for elsewhere; The Just, depicting the 1905 assassination of a Grand Duke in Moscow and testing the ethical limits of one’s belief in a political cause; and State of Emergency, an allegorical romp where The Plague itself appears as a central character, shedding new light on our current battles with viral disease and authoritarian regimes.
These are engaging, often incendiary works, now in fresh English translations that beg to be performed.
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“Terrorism, despotism, plague, and the wrong kind of freedom: Camus’s theater has never stopped speaking to us. In this long awaited new translation, I admire Ryan Bloom’s understanding of Camus’s voice and moral power…At last an English-language Camus ready for the twenty-first century stage!”
— Alice Kaplan, author of Looking for The Stranger
Quotes
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“Ryan Bloom’s translations, the first for many decades, breathe new life into Camus’s political dramas, which have become so relevant once more in the last, increasingly troubled decades.”
— Matthew Sharpe, author of Camus, Philosophe -
"The power of Camus’s voice and ideas shines forth in this new, eminently performable translation of the plays…The result is magical, as if Camus were speaking to us today through his characters, across time and borders.”
— Anne H. Quinney, professor of French, University of Mississippi
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About Albert Camus
Albert Camus (1913–1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. His 1942 book The Stranger is one of the most widely read novels of the twentieth century. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom.
About the Narrators
Edoardo Ballerini, an American actor, director, film producer, and multiaward–winning narrator. He has won several Audie Awards for best narration, including for 2019’s Best Male Narrator of the Year. He was named by Booklist as winner of their 2023 Voice of Choice Award, and was named a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine in 2019. He has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, from classics to modern masters, from bestsellers to the inspirational, from Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winners to spine-tingling series, and much more. In television and film, he is best known for his roles in A Murder at the End of the World, The Sopranos, 24, I Shot Andy Warhol, Dinner Rush, and Romeo Must Die. He is also trained in theater and continues to do much work on stage.
Michael Braun is an experienced and versatile narrator with over one hundred credits on Audible (both under his name as well as various pseudonyms) in genres ranging from thrillers to young adult, science fiction to romance.
Alyssa Bresnahan is a dynamic dancer, actor, and audiobook narrator. She has narrated over two hundred audiobooks, has earned twenty Earphones Awards, and was named one of AudioFile magazine’s Golden Voices. In 2009 she was a finalist for the prestigious Audie Award for best fiction narration.