Adamov, Arthur

Adamov, Arthur

(born Aug. 23, 1908, Kislovodsk, Russia—died March 16, 1970, Paris, France) Russian-born French playwright. He settled in Paris in 1924, and his first major work, written after suffering a nervous breakdown, was his autobiography, The Confession (1938–43). Influenced by August Strindberg and Franz Kafka, he began writing plays in 1947. Professor Taranne (1953) and Ping-Pong (1955) expressed a view of life's meaninglessness that was characteristic of the Theatre of the Absurd. In Paolo Paoli (1957) and later plays, he abandoned Absurdism for radical political theatre influenced by Bertolt Brecht. He died from a drug overdose, an apparent suicide.