Bøker av Simon Gray

Yellow Orang-Utan Industries is the most successful of corporations ever, not that anyone can say specifically what it is they do. The founder and president of Yellow Orang-Utan Industries hides from the public, using a computer generated fake president to do most of the talking he'd ordinarily be doing himself. The fake president, Piano Smedley, is universally liked and attributed to the corporation's success. But when news breaks that a body answering Piano Smedley's description has been found, problems arise.The real president's personal assistant, Gertrude, finds herself grieving the fake president, even when she knows better. The task of programming the replacement fake president is based on data from departments who can't make up their mind and the real president becomes even less engaged with business than before. The executive board of directors make an appearance to take control, but by the time the new fake president appears, interest in Yellow Orang-Utan Industries is plummeting.Gertrude's made some new friends amongst the corporation though. One of them is Wellington, who interprets the stock market remarkably well and quite loyally thinks he can help the corporation. If any of them could get through to the real president. Except also, Wellington's remarkable skills and this earnest belief may be because Wellington's a prototype android, and nobody was supposed to find that out.

This celebrated English drama by the author of Butley and Otherwise Engaged is based on a famous murder case involving a lonely divorced woman who has married a man thirty years her senior. However, his age and increasing deafness make her lonelier than before, and in desperation she takes up with a young man who has been hired as a gardener. He falls for her and, in a moment of passion, kills her husband with a pair of garden shears.|2 women, 4 men

Here is a hilarious look at the artistic pretensions of the young and the rich that charts a decade in the life of a London family transplanted to an idyllic country setting. A literary agent and his wife buy a Devon cottage where she can write, children will be happy, and they can relax. Into their world walks the local vicar a classically comic character who tends their magnificent garden and their emotional if not spiritual needs as the outside world intrudes with failure and disillusionment.|3 women, 5 men

A very English modern play, reeking of real tragedy, real humour and real life. The Common Pursuit chronicles the erosion of the ambitions of a smug, elitist group of Cambridge frien''s. Stuart is editor of a literary magazine and the pursuit of excellence is shown to be economically a bad proposition in this world. The magazine collapses and the characters'' fates vary as the play proceeds. An ironic epilogue returns to the early days in Cambridge with the young people planning their futures.|1 woman, 5 men

Stage Struck, an inventive thriller that employs a handful of actors to play chameleon like parts within parts, opens in the living room of one Robert Simon. Formerly a first rate stage manager in a provincial repertory company, he now he keeps house for his West End actress wife while amusing himself with various sexual adventures. He is a thoroughly happy man until the clumsy intervention of a psychiatrist destroys his happiness and his marriage. He plans a hideous revenge on his wife and the psychiatrist a reveng, which allows him to rediscover all his old talents.|1 woman, 3 men

Never has the celebrated author of Butley and Otherwise Engaged been more amusing and more touching than in this thoroughly delightful portrait of a mediocre but lovable English schoolteacher named St. John Quartermaine and his fellow faculty at a small school in Cambridge which teaches English to foreigners.2 women, 5 men

Isolated university professor Simon Hench, completely and selfishly otherwise engaged in listening to a new recording "Parsifal" is continually interrupted by students, friends, lovers and life.2 women, 5 men

'You should go out and buy The Smoking Diaries right now ... because you are unlikely to come across a funnier, cleverer, more painful book' Daily Telegraph

In 'The Pig Trade', under the shadow of Mussolini, a famous art historian and a notorious art dealer have an explosive final encounter. 'Japes Too' and 'Michael' recount the love of two brothers for one woman, and 'The Holy Terror' continues the story of a publisher's nervous breakdown.