The Real Inspector Hound & After Magritte

by Tom Stoppard

Book by Stoppard, Tom

Genres: Plays, Drama, Theatre, Fiction, Humor

105 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Sir Tom Stoppard was a Czech-born British playwright and screenwriter. He has written for film, radio, stage, and television, finding prominence with plays. His work covers the themes of human rights, censorship, and political freedom, often delving into the deeper philosophical thematics of society. Stoppard has been a playwright of the National Theatre and is one of the most internationally performed dramatists of his generation. He was knighted for his contribution to theatre by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997.

Born in Czechoslovakia, Stoppard left as a child refugee, fleeing imminent Nazi occupation. He settled with his family in Britain after the war, in 1946, having spent the previous three years (1943–1946) in a boarding school in Darjeeling in the Indian Himalayas. After being educated at schools in Nottingham and Yorkshire, Stoppard became a journalist, a drama critic and then, in 1960, a playwright.

Stoppard's most prominent plays include Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966), Jumpers (1972), Travesties (1974), Night and Day (1978), The Real Thing (1982), Arcadia (1993), The Invention of Love (1997), The Coast of Utopia (2002), Rock 'n' Roll (2006) and Leopoldstadt (2020). He wrote the screenplays for Brazil (1985), Empire of the Sun (1987), The Russia House (1990), Billy Bathgate (1991), Shakespeare in Love (1998), Enigma (2001), and Anna Karenina (2012), as well as the HBO limited series Parade's End (2013). He directed the film Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1990), an adaptation of his own 1966 play, with Gary Oldman and Tim Roth as the leads.

He has received numerous awards and honours including an Academy Award, a Laurence Olivier Award, and five Tony Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph ranked him number 11 in their list of the "100 most powerful people in British culture". It was announced in June 2019 that Stoppard had written a new play, Leopoldstadt, set in the Jewish community of early 20th-century Vienna. The play premiered in January 2020 at Wyndham's Theatre. The play went on to win the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play and later the 2022 Tony Award for Best Play.

Reviews

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

5 stars for Hound, 3 for Magritte.

[meeners · Rating 4 out of 5]

like another reviewer here, i'd give 5 stars for "the real inspector hound" and 3 stars for "magritte." the former is exactly the kind of stuff i love - a metaphysical detective story that bleeds into another story of satirical realism until finally the two merge and become a thing of REAL ULTIMATE POWER!!!11 - by which i mean brilliance, executed with typical stoppard elegance and flair. (the execution was so elegant i could die. perhaps literally, in the spirit of the play.)

god bless used bookstores everywhere - would never have stumbled across this otherwise.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for Inspector Hound, why not, because few contemporary writers could pull this off, I should think! After Magritte didn't have the same effect or show the same command: 2 to 2.5 stars there.

[Jack Brounstein · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Real Inspector Hound" is fantastic; "After Magritte" is weird and surreal in a superficially similar way, but without the charm.

"Hound": 5 stars
"Magritte": 2 stars

[Jonathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely 4 stars for TRIH, which is a delight. It's fast and funny and gleefully mocks too-clever murder mysteries as well as self-absorbed theatre critics. Stoppard is great at the play-within-a-play conceit, deftly weaving two worlds together until they become one with ludicrous results. I wasn't as keen on AM, although I still enjoyed it. The concept of a Surrealist painting come to life, and the multiple (rather bizarre!) viewpoints that affords, is amusing, but the play was perhaps a bit too farcical for me.

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very clever and funny story telling. The Real Inspector Hound weaves two audience members into the play they are watching. After Magritte illustrates how the varying perceptions of different people can lead to very different conclusions. So clever.