A succinct and informed account of the career and main themes of South Africa's leading dramatist by an authority in the field. Athol Fugard is widely recognised as one of the most important living dramatists, a total man of the theatre, whose work - individually and in collaboration with his black South African colleagues - has demonstrated the potential of art to bear witness to some of the most extreme events of our times. In this comprehensive critical study of his career over five decades, Dennis Walder asks how successfully the South African playwright's work continues the search for reconciliation and harmony in a country still haunted by its terrible past. Fugard is shown to have created a uniquely powerful and influential cultural form, as a result of his driving concern to acknowledge the doubts and aspirations, the pain and suffering of the poor and disinherited. Issues of protest and survival, difference and identity, place and memory are discussed as they arise in his plays, and as they have engaged audiences locally and internationally, often in significantly varied ways.