Brendan Behan

Borstal Boy

After the Wake

Confessions of an Irish Rebel

Nova Iorque

The "Hostage" (Modern Plays)

Un irlandese in America. La New York di Brendan Behan

A critical study of author Brendan Behan and his work, through collected letters, correspondence, material from previous publications and personal reminiscences. E.H.Mikhail has published work on other literary figures including "James Joyce: Interviews and Recollections".

The Letters of Brendan Behan

Includes Behan's complete dramatic works in English, three-full length plays and three one-act plays, with biographical details on Behan and the Irish Republican Movement

The Complete Plays

Bekenntnisse eines irischen Rebellen (Confessions of an Irish rebel, dt.) Aus d. Engl. übers. v. Annemarie Böll

Poems and a Play in Irish

Readers will enjoy these collected stories-including previously unpublished material-by the brilliant Dublin-born author of Borstal Boy, The Quare Fellow & The Hostage.

Twenty-one Prose Works Including Previously Unpublished Material

Sent to find the source of the heavenly music heard throughout the kingdom, the youngest son of the King of Ireland finds a beautiful maiden held captive by a fierce giant.

The King of Ireland's Son

An essential text in the development of modern British drama First staged by Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop company at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East, London, in 1958, The Hostage is a play about a Cockney soldier held as a hostage in a Dublin lodging house in exchange for an IRA man who is to be hanged in Belfast. Civic Guards accidentally shoot him in a raid on the house. It is a witty and often profound comment on Anglo-Irish relationships and on the Irish themselves. This is Behan's best-known and most popular play and a classic of the modern stage.A magnificent entertainment which "crowds in tragedy and comedy, bitterness and love, caricature and portrayal, ribaldry and eloquence, patriotism and cynicism..." (Harold Hobson, The Times)

The Hostage

This volume contains everything Brendan Behan wrote in dramatic form in English Contains the three famous full-length plays: The Quare Fellow, set in an Irish prison ("In Brendan Behan's tremendous new play language is out on a spree, ribald, dauntless and spoiling for a fight ... with superb dramatic tact, the tragedy is concealed beneath layer after layer of rough comedy" Observer); The Hostage, set in a Dublin lodging-house of doubtful repute where a young English soldier is being kept prisoner, "shouts, sings, thunders and stamps with life...a masterpiece" (The Times); and Richard's Cork Leg, set in a graveyard, "a joyous celebration of life" (Guardian). The volume also contains three one-act plays, originally written for radio and all intensely autobiographical, Moving Out, A Garden Party and The Big House.

Behan Complete Plays

From the snug of the 'Shaky Man' (probably the nearest pub to Guinness Brewery in Dublin) Brendan Behan take us on a tour of his native country. Not very much topographical information is imparted perhaps and even the Georgian architecture for which Dublin is deservedly famous is scarcely mentioned: 'Good architecture,' Mr. Behan reports as architect friend as saying 'is invisible.' Mr Behan is less interested in things than in people and a galaxy of characters and stories about the inhabitants of that Augustan city cross his pages. But Brendan has been outside Dublin from time to time as London, Paris, Berlin, New York, Montreal, San Francisco and Mexico City can well witness. His investigations among the aborigines of those famed cities are not his concern in this book, however: those anthropological investigations must await another occasion for the telling. Here he regales us with his views on Dublin, the North of Ireland, Galway and the Aran Islands and the counties of the south - always with an eye on the people and their habits rather than on the places themselves. He was accompanied on many expeditions by Paul Hogarth, whose drawings complement the spirit of the text as no other artist's could have done. Intellectuality stimulating, Mr. Behan discourses on the evils of drinking potheen, the mores of Limerick girls, storytellers in the last bastion of Gaelic culture on the Aran Islands, the Irish middle-classes and what he calls 'the Anglo-Irish Horse-Protestants.' Enlivened with song, poem, story, and Paul Hogarth's drawings, this book tells a lot about Ireland but tells us even more about that fascinating human Behan.

An Irish Sketch-book

Brendan Behan's Island

Brendan Behan's Confessions of an Irish rebel

The immigration man read my deportation order, looked at it and handed it back to me. 'Are you Irish?' he asked me. 'No' I said 'as a matter of fact, I'm Yemenite Arab.' Two detectives came forward who were evidently there to meet me. 'Apparently he is Brendan Behan,' they said. The immigration officer shook my hand and his hard face softened. 'Cead mile failte romhat abhaile.' (A hundred thousand welcomes home to you.) I could not answer. There are no words and it would be impertinence to try. I walked down the gangway. I was free. First published after Brendan Behan's tragic death, Confessions of an Irish Rebel picks up where Borstal Boy left off. Not only is it the last instalment of a unique and unorthodox autobiography, but of a unique and unorthodox life that was as touched with genius as it was with doom.

Confessions Of An Irish Rebel

The Irish poet and playwright shares his impressions of the city of New York, and its night life and celebrities

Brendan Behan's New York

Mi Nueva York

Neil LaBute

Seductive and provocative, each tale in Seconds of Pleasure finds men and women exploiting - or at the mercy of - the hidden fault lines that separate them. Seconds of Pleasure unleashes his imagination in stories that offer unflinching insight into our very human shortcomings and impure urges with shocking candor.

Brendan Behan

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