Book excerpt: Harold Pinter's Politics examines the expression of Pinter's political beliefs across every aspect and era of his artistic career. The fierce political stances of this important dramatist have been embodied in plays, screenplays, and his career as a theatrical director. Traditionally associated with absurdism, minimalism, and the dramatization of uncertainty, Pinter's name is now a byword for anti-authoritarian and anti-American politics. This transition has been in evidence from the earliest phases of his writing; all of Pinter's work emerges from his political views. His uniqueness as a political artist is that he is pessimistic about changing his audience or making it see its complicity in the horrors of the modern world. These horrors are dramatized through images of torture and oppression culminating in moments of silence that index the full extent of the destruction unleashed by the forces of power against dissidence.