Barbara Bray was an influential translator of twentieth-century French literature into English. She was an early champion of Marguerite Duras, and also translated the work of Jean Genet, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Anouilh, and Alain Robbe-Grillet. She worked as a script editor for the BBC in the 1950s, and there commissioned radio plays by young writers such as Harold Pinter. For over thirty years she had a close relationship with Samuel Beckett, and was one of the few people with whom he shared his thoughts and works in progress.
Books
The Bridge of Beyond
A multi-generational tale of love and madness, mothers and daughters, folkloric wisdom and the grim legacy of slavery, set on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe. “There’s magic, madness, glory, tenderness, above all abundant hope.”—Financial Times
Monsieur Proust
This lovely book is as close as we can come to meeting Proust in person.
Prisoner of Love
Genet’s final masterpiece, written and rewritten on his deathbed, is a lyrical and philosophical voyage to the bloody intersection of oppression, terror, and desire at the heart of the contemporary world.