The God of Slaughter
Tags
Summary
Laurence Olivier Award for Best Comedy. Roman Polanski's film adaptation won the Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Ensemble, and the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. God of Carnage is a representative play by French playwright Yasmina Reza. On an ordinary day, two eleven-year-old boys quarrel in a park, and one strikes the other's mouth with a stick. This minor children's dispute brings together two couples who otherwise have no connection. Beginning with a negotiation over the child's injury, they peel away, one by one, the undercurrents beneath the calm surface of their lives—between families, between spouses, between men and women—with laughter, anger, mockery, and sarcasm. It is not only a questioning and disputation of the two concepts of civility and savagery, but also a collision of Western values: slaughter or peace, heroism or quietism. Since its premiere, God of Carnage has been performed widely around the world. Polanski's film adaptation won the 2011 Boston Society of Film Critics Award for Best Ensemble, the 2011 Venice Film Festival Golden Lion, and the César Award for Best Adapted Screenplay; the play has been staged many times in mainland China.
Editor's review
As an editor, I believe the value of this book lies not only in the literary quality of its dramatic text, but also in the way it works like a prism, refracting the spiritual predicament of the contemporary middle class. Reza offers no simple moral judgment; instead, she lets the audience (and readers) examine for themselves, amid the characters' self-contradictions and mutual recriminations, how fragile the etiquette, rules, and values we rely on for survival really are. The book's discussions of educational ideas, marriage, and social identity remain powerfully relevant today. This edition from Shanghai Translation Publishing House is smoothly translated and does a good job of preserving the rhythm and satirical flavor of the original, making it suitable for careful reading.
Reading God of Carnage, you see not only a story about children, but also a modern parable about how we package instinct in civilization and how civilization collapses under instinctual impulse.
Who it's for
A good fit for
- Readers interested in exploring contemporary social issues and the complexity of human nature
- Lovers of dramatic literature, especially those who appreciate ingenious structure and sharp dialogue
- Thinkers concerned with themes such as education, class, and cultural conflict
- Readers who enjoy in-depth discussion and reflection after reading
Not a good fit for
- Readers seeking light entertainment or pure plot excitement
- Readers who want the story to have a clear moral conclusion and a reconciliatory ending
Reading tips
- You may first read quickly through once to feel the rhythm of the dialogue and the escalation of conflict
- On a second reading, focus on how each character's words expose their subconscious and values
- Try imagining the reading scene as a theatre, building the characters' expressions and movements in your mind to experience the unique charm of a dramatic text
About the publisher
Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.
Contents
- 版权信息
- 剧中人物
- 杀戮之神
- 杀戮之神
FAQ
Is this book in script form? Will it be difficult to read?
What is the ending? Is it as intense as what is shown in the film?
Does the author Yasmina Reza have other works worth paying attention to?
Comments
Find this book
This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.
About the author
Yasmina Reza is a playwright and writer included in this catalogue; public information about her is limited, and her nationality, dates of birth and death, and English name are not confirmed. The catalogue holds two of her works, the representative plays Art and God of Carnage, both stage dramas, and they are classified locally under film and television and folk literature. These two plays show that her writing centres on the everyday relationships of contemporary urban people. She is skilled at using spare dialogue and restrained conflict to approach themes such as friendship, marriage and respectability; her plots do not rely on grand narrative but move forward through verbal tension and subtle friction between characters. Art focuses on a quarrel among friends triggered by a painting, exploring taste and emotional recognition, while God of Carnage uses a meeting between two families dealing with their children's dispute to reveal conflict and loss of control beneath adult politeness. Her plays are short, tightly structured and sharp in dialogue, and have considerable readability and performance frequency on the contemporary stage, which is the main basis for understanding her work.
Gong Baorong: publicly available information is limited. What can be confirmed is that he is mainly engaged in writing and academic editing in the fields of theater and film, with four works held in the collection. Judging from script-type works such as Art and The God of Carnage, he attends to the presentation and stage expression of dramatic texts; International Perspectives on Dramatic Studies reflects his cross-cultural comparative approach to theater theory; and Cultural Studies of "Nostalgia" in Theater and Film: Proceedings of the Tenth Yangtze River Delta Graduate Academic Forum on Theater and Film shows his involvement in academic discussion and paper editing in theater and film, focusing on how cultural themes such as nostalgia are expressed on stage and screen. His works are commonly classified under film and television and folk literature, leaning overall toward theater scholarship and film and television cultural studies, combining textual creation with academic compilation.
