Six Characters in Search of an Author

Six fictional characters walk into a theater rehearsal and demand that actors perform their story. Pirandello’s Nobel Prize-winning play is Italian literature’s great contribution to modern theater: a work that questions the nature of identity, authorship, and reality itself.

Why Read This

After Calvino’s metafiction and Levi’s testimony, Pirandello completes the triangle with Italian literature’s third great gift to the world: a theater that questions its own foundations. Written in 1921, it anticipates every postmodern game by half a century.

What to Expect

A short, revolutionary play. Can be read in an hour. The premise is simple; the implications are endless.