Recommendations
Books Like Betrayal
Best books to read after Betrayal by Harold Pinter
Readers who love Betrayal by Harold Pinter are drawn to its combination of formal elegance, the devastating dramatic irony of the reverse chronological order, and the quiet precision with which Pinter maps the emotional landscape of an adulterous affair — they want plays and novels that deal with infidelity, the relationship between memory and truth, and the formal experimentation that Pinter brought to the British stage.
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The Homecoming
by Harold Pinter
The companion — Teddy, Ruth, Max, Sam, Lenny, Joey, and the play's disturbing power dynamics. Companion explorations of sexual power and family/friendship loyalty: The Homecoming organized around dominance and submission; Betrayal around the quieter violence of infidelity
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The Birthday Party
by Harold Pinter
The earlier companion — Stanley, Goldberg, McCann, the birthday party. Reading all three Pinter plays shows the development of his formal and thematic preoccupations: from the external threat (Birthday Party) to the domestic power struggle (The Homecoming) to the private infidelity (Betrayal)
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Anna Karenina
by Leo Tolstoy
Tolstoy's companion in the literary tradition of the investigation of adultery and its costs. Companion investigations of adultery in different formal registers: Tolstoy's the expansive nineteenth-century novel; Pinter's the compressed reverse-chronological late-twentieth-century play. Both organized around the impossibility of containing the consequences of the affair
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The End of the Affair
by Graham Greene
Greene's companion — Maurice Bendrix's obsession with Sarah Miles after their affair ends. Both are companion investigations of the emotional aftermath of an adultery: Greene's in forward chronological order from the outside; Pinter's in reverse chronological order that makes the audience complicit in knowing more than the characters do
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Old Times
by Harold Pinter
The companion Pinter play — Deeley and Kate and Kate's old friend Anna, and the battle over memory and possession. Companion late Pinter plays about the relationship between memory, possession, and the past: both organized around competing memories of what happened and who owns the other person
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Five Finger Exercise
by Peter Shaffer
Shaffer's companion in the British tradition of the play about the violence concealed in family relationships. Companion British plays about the fragility of family and friendship arrangements, and what happens when an insider relationship conducted outside reveals the arrangement's concealed violence
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The French Lieutenant's Woman
by John Fowles
Fowles's companion in the tradition of the British literary investigation of the relationship between Victorian and modern understanding of adultery. Companion investigations of the same question from opposite formal positions: Fowles plays Victorian conventions against a modern awareness; Pinter strips the conventions away to show the bare dynamics of the relationship
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Cheating at Canasta
by William Trevor
Trevor's companion in the Irish/British literary tradition of the short story investigation of marital failure and the quiet devastation of intimate relationships. Trevor's stories about the quiet violence of long marriages and their failures are the prose companion to Pinter's theatrical investigation: both are organized around what is said between the lines of polite conversation
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