Indian Ink - Softcover

Stoppard, Tom

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802127452 ISBN 13: 9780802127457

Publisher: Grove Press, 2017

Synopsis

From Tony Award-winning playwright Tom Stoppard, Indian Ink is a rich and moving portrait of intimate lives set against one of the great shafts of history―the emergence of the Indian subcontinent from the grip of Europe. The play follows free-spirited English poet Flora Crewe on her travels through India in the 1930s, where her intricate relationship with an Indian artist unfurls against the backdrop of a country seeking its independence. Fifty years later, in 1980s England, her younger sister Eleanor attempts to preserve the legacy of Flora’s controversial career, while Flora’s would-be biographer is following a cold trail in India. Fresh from the critically acclaimed off-Broadway performance in 2014, Indian Ink is reemerging as an important part of Stoppard’s oeuvre and the global dramatic canon, a fascinating, time-hopping masterwork.

About this title

About the Author:

Tom Stoppard is the author of such seminal works as Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Jumpers, The Real Thing, Arcadia, The Invention of Love, and the trilogy The Coast of Utopia. His screen credits include Parade’s End, Shakespeare in Love, Enigma, Empire of the Sun, and Anna Karenina.

Review:

Praise for Indian Ink:

“A play brimming with rasa . . . [Indian Ink] encompasses broad themes―from the morality of colonialism to our inability to truly understand the past―at the same time that it relates one of the most touching tales of human relationships Stoppard has ever written.”―Baltimore Sun

“A lot of bases for one play to cover. As is his wont, Mr. Stoppard touches on them all, running from one to the other and back again, with great speed and alacrity . . . There’s plenty to cherish . . . An expansion of Mr. Stoppard’s earlier In the Native State, a 1991 radio play, Indian Ink retains vestiges of a form that is as satisfactorily heard as it is seen . . . As usual, Mr. Stoppard is in firm control of his themes and his language, which are inseparable. The dialogue is rife with witty instances of misunderstandings that remind us that there’s more than one way to speak and hear English.”―Ben Brantley, New York Times

“A provocative character study . . . novelistic in scope. The novelist I have in mind is Henry James, who worked similar turf in The Aspern Papers . . . A fascinating premise.”―Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal

“Stoppard’s witty, decade- and continent-leaping tale of love and aesthetics, politics, biography and the British Raj . . . Ink ascends to erotically tinged aesthetic and dramatic heights . . . A shimmering effect.”―San Francisco Chronicle

“Excellent . . . There’s no denying the astonishing craft of the individual scenes, the masterly way Stoppard plays with echoes and reversals, tossing themes this way and that like pizza dough. The dialogue, too, is deeply entertaining―sexy or funny, and often both, as the case requires.”―New York

“A 1995 play by the exceedingly intelligent Tom Stoppard . . . Stoppard delights.”―Time Out New York

“Where has Indian Ink been all our lives? . . . [A] major Tom Stoppard play . . . Rich, entertaining, resonantly melancholy.”―Newsday

“[A] sensuous story of love and art.”―Huffington Post

“Tom Stoppard’s witty 1995 play Indian Ink takes a romantic look back at India under waning British rule.”―Associated Press

“Indian Ink leaves [an] indelible mark . . . Is there a writer with a more insatiable mind or heart than Tom Stoppard? In play after play, he has tackled subjects ranging from chaos theory and the philosophical underpinnings of the Russian Revolution to marriage and adultery with both a ferocious intellectual dexterity and a depth of human feeling that can make you laugh or move you to tears.”―USA Today

“An evocative, erotically charged piece of writing . . . Indian Ink affords the quietly affecting pleasures of an intimate story told with sensitivity and restraint . . . [and] conjures an arresting sense of romance and melancholy.”―Hollywood Reporter

“Simply let yourself go to be swirled up in Tom Stoppard’s Indian Ink, a layered comedy about an English poet’s artistic-erotic visit to India in 1930 and the attempt of others to come to terms with its legacy 55 years later.”―Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

“The British playwright has always dazzled with his wit and mental agility, his gift for twirling characters and themes across the expanse of time and space. Indian Ink is no exception, an epic grappling with colonialism, race and history, but it’s also unexpectedly moving . . . Stimulates the heart as well as the intellect.”―Mercury News

“Tom Stoppard’s intelligent and sensitive play about art and love in the British Raj . . . It’s impossible to walk away without having learned something new. History and myth perform a graceful waltz through a storyline that unfolds like a good mystery novel.”―TheaterMania.com

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0802127452
• ISBN 13: 9780802127457
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 144