Books by Brian Friel

It is 1936 and harvest time in County Donegal. In a house just outside the village of Ballybeg live the five Mundy sisters, barely making ends meet, their ages ranging from twenty-six up to forty. The two male members of the household are brother Jack, a missionary priest, repatriated from Africa by his superiors after 25 years, and the seven-year-old child of the youngest sister. In depicting two days in the life of this menage, Brian Friel evokes not simply the interior landscape of a group of human beings trapped in their domestic situation, but the wider landscape, interior and exterior, Christian and pagan, of which they are a part.

This fifth collection of Brian Friel's work contains:Uncle Vanya (after Chekhov) (1998) The Yalta Game (after Chekhov) (2001) The Bear (after Chekhov) (2002) Afterplay (after 2002) Performances (2003) The Home Place (2005) Hedda Gabler (after Ibsen) (2005)

One of the masterpieces of Ireland's greatest living playwright, Faith Healer weaves together the stories of a travelling healer, his wife and his manager. From their different versions of the healer's performances and a terrible event at the centre of the drama, Friel creates a powerful and haunting work of art.

This third collection of Brian Friel's work contains:Three Sisters (Chekhov) (1981)The Communication Cord (1982) Fathers and Sons (Turgenev) (1987) Making History (1988) Dancing at Lughnasa (1990)

This second collection of Brian Friel's work contains:The Freedom of the City (1973) Volunteers (1975) Living Quarters (1977) Aristocrats (1979) (March) Faith Healer (1979) (April) Translations (1980)

This marks the first of five volumes collecting together the complete work of Brian Friel. The Enemy Within (1962) Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964)The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966) Lovers (Winners and Losers) (1967) Crystal and Fox (1968) The Gentle Island (1971)

This enthralling play considers the relationship between the private life and public work of the composer Leos Janacek, the passion he felt for a married woman nearly forty years his junior, and his final surge of creative energy.Performances premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in 2003.

The year is 1878. The widowed Christopher Gore, his son David and their housekeeper Margaret, the woman with whom they are both in love, live at The Lodge in Ballybeg. But in this era of unrest at the dawn of Home Rule, their seemingly serene life is threatened by the arrival of Christopher's English cousin, who unwittingly ignites deep animosity among the villagers of Ballybeg. The Home Place premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in February 2005.

YORK NOTES ADVANCED - THE ULTIMATE LITERATURE GUIDES.

The central character of this play is Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, who led an Irish and Spanish alliance against the armies of Elizabeth I in an attempt to drive the English out of Ireland. The action takes place before and after the Battle of Kinsale, at which the alliance was defeated: with O'Neill at home in Dungannon, as a fugitive in the mountains, and finally exiled in Rome. In his handling of this momentous episode Brian Friel has avoided the conventions of 'historical drama' to produce a play about history, the continuing process.

The action takes place in late August 1833 at a hedge-school in the townland of Baile Beag, an Irish-speaking community in County Donegal. In a nearby field camps a recently arrived detachment of the Royal Engineers, making the first Ordnance Survey. For the purposes of cartography, the local Gaelic place names have to be recorded and rendered into English. In examining the effects of this operation on the lives of a small group, Brian Friel skillfully reveals the far-reaching personal and cultural effects of an action which is at first sight purely administrative. "e;Translations"e; is a modern classic. It engages the intellect as well as the heart, and achieves a profound political and philosophical resonance through the detailed examination of individual lives, of particular people in particular place and time."e; Daily Telegraph"e;This is Brian Friel's finest play, his most deeply thought and felt, the most deeply involved with Ireland but also the most universal: haunting and hard, lyrical and erudite, bitter and forgiving, both praise and lament."e; Sunday Times

Fed up with the dreary round of life in Ballybeg, with his uncommunicative father and the humiliating job in his father's grocery shop, with his frustrated love for Kathy Doogan who married a richer, more successful young man and with the total absence of prospect and opportunity in his life at home, Gareth O'Donnell has accepted his aunt's invitation to come to Philadelphia. Now, on the eve of his departure, he is not happy to be leaving Ballybeg.With this play Brian Friel made his reputation and it is now an acknowledged classic of modern drama.