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 (193843). 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.