Samuel Beckett: the search for self -- Arthur Adamov: the curable and the incurable -- Eugène Ionesco: theatre and anti-theatre -- Jean Genet: a hall of mirrors -- Parallels and proselytes. Jean Tardieu. Boris Vian. Dino Buzzati. Ezio d'Errico. Manuel de Pedrolo. Fernando Arrabal. Max Frisch. Wolfgang Hildesheimer. Günter Grass. Robert Pinget. Harold Pinter. Norman Frederick Simpson. Edward Albee. Jack Gelber. Arthur Kopit. The theatre of the absurd in Eastern Europe. Slawomir Mrozek. Tadeusz Rózewicz. Vaclav Havel. -- The tradition of the absurd -- The significance of the absurd -- Beyond the absurd.