A01=David Lan
Author_David Lan
Category=DDC
displaced people
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
Juliet Stevenson
memory play
Stephen Daldry
The Reader
UNRWA
WWII
Product details
- ISBN 9780571393763
- Dimensions: 129 x 198mm
- Publication Date: 25 Sep 2025
- Publisher: Faber & Faber
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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All my life, all your life, I've struggled with this - was what I did 'wrong'?
Germany, 1945. Thomas, one of thousands of children stolen by the Nazis from Eastern Europe during WWII, is under the care of Ruth, a UN relief worker. She must choose whether to try to find his parents or leave him with those he's grown up with. The choice she makes will shape his life.
London, 1990. Years later, Thomas visits Ruth. As they untangle the past, the decisions Ruth made as a very young woman are called powerfully into question.
David Lan's remarkable play explores the shapeshifting nature of memory and morality. It opened at the National Theatre, London, in September 2025.
David Lan was born in Cape Town. He has lived in London since 1972. His plays have been produced by the National Theatre, the Royal Court, the RSC and the Almeida. He has published an ethnography, Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe and a memoir, As if by Chance. He was writer-in-residence at the Royal Court from 1995 to 1997 and artistic director of the Young Vic from 2000 to 2018. In 2018 he received the Laurence Olivier Special Award, the Critics' Circle Special Award and the RAI 'Anthropology in the World' award. He is Theatre Associate at BAM in New York.
