The Piano Lesson (Penguin Plays & Screenplays) - Softcover

August Wilson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140265260 ISBN 13: 9780140265262

Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd, 1997

Synopsis

Two of August Wilson's plays are brought together here in this one volume, comprising "The Piano Lesson" and "Joe Turner's Come and Gone". "The Piano Lesson" was the winner of the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

About this title

About the Author

August Wilson is the most influential and successful African American playwright writing today. He is the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Fences, The Piano Lesson, King Hedley II, Ma Rainy's Black Bottom, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, Seven Guitars, Two Trains Running, Jitney and Radio Golf. His plays have been produced all over the world.

Review

Drama in two acts by August Wilson, produced in 1987 and published in 1990. The play, which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1990, is part of Wilson's cycle about African-American life in the 20th century. The action takes place in Pittsburgh in 1936 at the house of a family of African-Americans who have migrated from Mississippi. The conflict centers around a piano that was once traded by the family's white master for two of the family's ancestors. Boy Willie and Berniece, the siblings who inherit the piano (carved to show family history), argue about whether or not to sell it. Berniece's climactic refusal to allow Boy Willie to move the piano exorcises both the literal and figurative ghost of the white slave owner who has been haunting the family. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0140265260
• ISBN 13: 9780140265262
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 240