He spent most of his childhood in France and, while there, had an experience he claimed affected his perception of the world more significantly than any other. Many sources cite his birthdate as 1912, this error being due to vanity on the part of Ionesco himself, who wanted the year of his birth to coincide with that of when his idol, Romanian playwright Caragiale, died. Eugène was baptized into the Orthodox Christian faith.

According to other sources his mother was Jewish. Accorind to some sources, her faith was Protestant (the faith into which her father was born and to which her originally Greek Orthodox Christian mother had converted). His mother was of French and Romanian heritage. His father was Romanian belonging to the Orthodox Christian church. He was made a member of the Académie française in 1970, and was awarded the 1970 Austrian State Prize for European Literature, and the 1973 Jerusalem Prize. Ionesco instigated a revolution in ideas and techniques of drama, beginning with his 'anti play', The Bald Soprano which contributed to the beginnings of what is known as the Theatre of the Absurd, which includes a number of plays that, following the ideas of the philosopher Albert Camus, explore concepts of absurdism and surrealism. Eugène Ionesco ( French: born Eugen Ionescu, Romanian: ( listen) 26 November 1909 – 28 March 1994) was a Romanian- French playwright who wrote mostly in French, and was one of the foremost figures of the French avant-garde theatre in the 20th century.

Rhinoceros de eugene ionesco