Rabindranath Tagore is one the most forgotten Nobel laureates. Red Oleanders is one of the his most forgotten works. Red Oleanders is at the same time one of the best plays I ever read. By Wikipedia it’s about a kleptocratic king who enriches himself by forcing his subjects to mine. The heroine, Nandini, eventually rallies the common people to destroy these symbols of subjugation. But that’s not entirely true. Red Oleanders is about much more. It’s about love, and beauty. It’s about freedom. It’s about systems that enslave people, that tyrannize them to dust. It’s about rulers that fall victim to their own rule. It’s about bureaucracy, and how it empties people. And it’s about women. Through one special woman, I see what is so magnificent (can be so magnificent) in women. It’s about power, which is good, and power which is rotten. For me, this book encapsulates an essence that connects love on all its kinds - love that comes our of wonder, love that comes out of possession, love that comes out of being possessed, and just being.
The best description is the one written on the back of the Hebrew edition’s cover, which translates into:

It’s an allegorical play - an eulogies to the freedom of man and its soul, an anthem to faith and love, to nature and joy, the standard of revolt for independence selfness.Red Oleanders is a strive to the secret of truth, to the aftermath of ever freedom, a cry of triumph that the free has, the victory of life over death, spirit over matter.

Oh, and you probably can’t read it. It’s out of print and hard to get. There’s a wonderful Hebrew translation that got to me a few years ago on account of its beautiful cover. There’s a good English version that took me another few years to get, until it surfaced all of a sudden on Ebay. So I decided to amend this horrible error. I decided to start sending Red Oleanders (mostly the English version) to friends around the world. They didn’t ask for it, and maybe they won’t enjoy it. But maybe they will. No PDFs, no scans, a real paper photocopy. Each will receive their own copy, from me to them.
So far the book has been sent to:
Munich, Germany (2 people)
Leipzig, Germany
Barcelona, Spain
Haifa, Israel
Links:
Rabindranath Tagore on Wikipedia