English playwright, born in londen as the son of a jewish tailor, who achieved international success as one of the most complex post-World War II dramatist. Pinter's plays are noted for their use of silence to increase tension, understatement, and cryptic small talk. Equally recognizable are the 'Pinteresque' themes - nameless menace, erotic fantasy, obsession and jealousy, family hatred and mental disturbance.

Pinter's major plays are usually set in a single room, whose occupants are threatened by forces or people whose precise intentions neither the characters nor the audience can define. Often they are engaged in a struggle for survival or identity. Pinter refuses to provide rational justifications for action, but offers existential glimpses of bizarre or terrible moments in people's lives. In MONOLOGUE (1973) and NO MAN'S LAND (1975) the characters use words as their weapons in their struggles, not only for survival but also for sanity.

In 1960 Pinter wrote THE DUMB WAITER. With his second full-length play, THE CARETAKER (1960), Pinter made his reputation as a major modern talent. It was followed by A SLIGHT ACHE (1961), THE COLLECTION (1962), THE DWARFS (1963), THE LOVER (1963) and THE HOMECOMING (1965), the story of an estranged son who brings his wife home to meet his family, perhaps the most enigmatic of all his works. It won a Tony Award, the Whitebread Anglo-American Theater Award, and the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. After teaching philosophy at an American university for six years, Teddy brings his wife Ruth home to London to meet his family: his father Max, a nagging, aggressive ex-butcher, and other member of the all-male household. At the end Teddy returns alone to his university job in America. No one needs him and he needs no one. Ruth stays as a mother or whore to his family. Everyone needs her. - Similar motifs - the battle for domination in a sexual context - recur in Landscape and Silence (both 1969), and In Old Times (1971)Although Pinter has told in an interview in 1966, that he never has written any part for any actor, his wife Vivien Merchant, frequently appeared in his plays. In the 1960s he also directed several of his dramas. After BETRAYAL (1978) Pinter wrote no new full-length plays until MOONLIGHT (1994). Short plays include A KIND OF ALASKA (1982), inspired by the case histories in Oliver Sack's Awakenings (1973).

In january 2002 pinter was diagnosed with cancer in the oesopaghus.see also: * harold pinter [persons]