In this work, Anthony Burgess, a prodigy of the modern novel and a virtuoso of the English language, has brought his special gifts to bear on one of the great texts of the classic theatre – one with a hero whose name has become synonymous with raffish, big-nosed, big-souled nobility. The result is this supple and effervescently witty translation of Cyrano de Bergerac.

As befits the translator who contributed subtitles to the acclaimed Jean-Paul Rappenau film (starring Gérard Depardieu), Burgess has produced a Cyrano of immense theatricality: one that combines verse and prose, along with judicious cuts and rearrangements, to restore the biting comedy, high pathos, and, above all, the panache, missing from what was previously the standard English translation