Adamov (originally Adamian) was born in Kislovodsk in the Terek Oblast of the Russian Empire to a wealthy Armenian family.[2]:92 At the outbreak of the First World War, the family was at risk of being interned as "enemy citizens", and only "through the special intervention of the King of Wurttemberg" were they able to escape to Geneva, Switzerland.[2]:93 Adamov was educated in Switzerland and Germany,[2]:93 with French as his primary language. In 1924, when he was sixteen years old, he moved to Paris, France.[2]:93 There he met artists associated with the Surrealist Movement and edited the surrealist journal Discontinuité.[2]:93
Postwar career
He began to write plays at the end of World War II.[2]:98La Parodie (1947) was his first play, which Martin Esslin has identified as "an attempt to come to terms with neurosis, to make psychological states visible in concrete terms".[2]:98 His work influenced by August Strindberg,[2]:98 is often dream-like and later works in particular have a political element influenced by Bertolt Brecht[3]. The title character of one of his best known works, Le Professeur Taranne (1953), is accused of various things (public nudity, littering, plagiarism), all of which he strenuously denies, only to have his denials turned against him into more evidence of misdemeanours. This particular play was directly influenced by a dream Adamov had.[citation needed]
Lesser known to the public is his prose work with short stories such as "Fin Août" (in Je... Ils..., 1969). Their themes revolve around topics including masochism, which the author regarded as "immunisation against death". Adamov translated a number of works by German authors (Rilke, Büchner) and Russian classics (Gogol, Chekhov) into French.[citation needed]
