Tom Stoppard

by Ira Bruce Nadel

"Tom Stoppard is one of the greatest living English playwrights. In this portrait, Ira Nadel weaves Stoppard's life and work into a work of critical biography. Peopled with such theatrical luminaries as Diana Rigg and John Wood as well as newcomers like Gwyneth Paltrow, the book untangles the strands of Stoppard's genius and conflicted identity against the backdrop of Broadway, Hollywood, London's West End and the theatrical beehive of London's National Theatre in its early days. Nadel looks at Stoppard's early years in Eastern Europe, his time in India and his ultimate emigration to the United Kingdom where he, the Czech-born son of Jewish parents, became the quintessential Englishman. Tom Stoppard: A Life weaves in and out of the reality of Tom Stoppard's life and its frequent fractured Stoppardian depiction on the stage. As Stoppard readies his newest play, a trilogy entitled The Coast of Utopia, for the National Theatre, Ira Nadel paints a portrait of Tom Stoppard that will be must