Harold Pinter''s Party Time

All you have do is shut up and enjoy the hospitality. Terry

Harold Pinters Party Time (1991) is an extraordinary distillation of the playwrights key concerns. Pulsing with political anger, it marks a stepping stone on Pinters path from iconic dramatist of existential unease to Nobel Prize-winning poet of human rights.

G. D. White situates this underrated play within a recognisably Pinteresque landscape of ambiguous, brittle social drama while also recognising its particularity: Party Time is haunted by Augusto Pinochets right-wing coup against Salvador Allendes democratically elected government in Chile. This book considers the play and its confederate works in the dual context of Pinters literary career and burgeoning international concern with human rights and freedom of expression.

White contrasts Pinters uneasy relationship with the UKs powerful elite with the worldwide acclaim garnered by his dramatic eviscerations of power.