A short life of the author
Yasmina Reza (born 1959) is one of the most commercially successful and critically respected dramatists of the past three decades — a French playwright whose work has been translated into dozens of languages and performed on virtually every major stage in the world. Art (1994) and God of Carnage (2006) are modern classics of the well-made play, works that use the conventions of drawing-room comedy to expose the aggression, pettiness, and philosophical emptiness that lie beneath bourgeois social performance.
Life and Career
Reza was born in Paris to a family of Hungarian-Iranian Jewish origin — her father was Iranian, her mother Hungarian. She studied at the University of Paris X Nanterre and at the Jacques Lecoq International Theatre School. She began her career as an actress before turning to writing.
Her early plays — Conversations After a Burial (1987), The Passage of Winter (1990), Art (1994) — established her as a dramatist of precision and wit. Art (“Art”, 1994) was her international breakthrough: three men, friends for years, fall into a bitter argument over a white painting purchased by one of them for a large sum of money. The play is ostensibly about aesthetics — what makes something art? — but it is really about friendship, status, envy, and the way people use culture as a weapon. It won the Molière Award for Best Play and the Olivier Award and Tony Award for Best Play in its English-language productions. It has been performed in over forty countries.
God of Carnage and the Novels
God of Carnage (Le Dieu du carnage, 2006) was equally successful. Two couples meet to discuss a playground fight between their sons. The meeting begins with civilized pleasantries and degenerates, over the course of ninety minutes, into a savage free-for-all in which all pretense of decorum is stripped away. The play won the Olivier Award and Tony Award for Best Play and was adapted by Roman Polanski into the film Carnage (2011).
Reza’s novels — Hammerklavier (1997), Adam Haberberg (2003), Dawn, Dusk, or Night (2007, a portrait of Nicolas Sarkozy during his presidential campaign), Happy Are the Happy (2013), Babylon (2016), and Serge (2021) — are written with the same economy and observational ruthlessness as her plays. Serge (2021), about three adult siblings navigating family obligation, aging, and a visit to Auschwitz, was widely praised as her best novel.
Key Works
- Art (1994)
- God of Carnage (2006)
- Serge (2021)
- Babylon (2016)
Collecting Reza
French first editions (Albin Michel, Actes Sud, Flammarion, Gallimard) are the primary collectibles, though Reza’s international fame means English editions are also collected. “Art” first French edition (Actes Sud, 1994) brings $30–$75. English translations (Faber and Faber UK, various US publishers) of the plays are modestly priced. Serge (Flammarion, 2021; Seven Stories Press US, 2023) signed is $25–$50. Reza signs at events in France and occasionally in London and New York. Play texts are generally less collected than novels, but Reza’s plays are canonical enough to sustain demand. The published scripts of Art and God of Carnage in their various languages and editions create a complex bibliographic field for completist collectors.