by Ayad Akhtar
Then the lawyer turned and walked out.
Mina cried for days and nights and weeks to follow. Yet, devastated as she was by Hamed’s brutality—and terrified by his menacing promise to take her son away someday—when she stared down into her infant’s eyes, she nevertheless cooed to him with the name that her now-ex-husband had chosen without her:
She called the boy Imran.
ALSO BY AYAD AKHTAR
Disgraced
American Dervish
Praise for
The Who & The What
“Disarmingly funny. A fiery… probing new play, crackling with ideas.”
—Charles Isherwood, New York Times
“Vibrant. Strong and colorful. A culture-clash drama simmering with humor.”
—Associated Press
“Fearless… powerful… Ayad Akhtar is… prodigiously talented.”
—Jeremy Gerard, Deadline
“Continually absorbing… Akhtar has a splendid command of structure, and… a fine ear for dialogue.”
—The New Yorker
“Funny and insightful. A blistering rebuke of a traditionalist, unquestioning view of Islam.”
—Zachary Stewart, Theatermania
“Akhtar is a provocative, wise and funny playwright.”
—Steven Suskin, Huffington Post
Praise for
Disgraced
“The best play I saw last year.… A quick-witted and shattering drama.… Disgraced rubs all kinds of unexpected raw spots with intelligence and humor.”
—Linda Winer, Newsday
“A sparkling and combustible contemporary drama.… Ayad Akhtar’s one-act play deftly mixes the political and personal, exploring race, freedom of speech, political correctness, even the essence of Islam and Judaism. The insidery references to the Hamptons and Bucks County, Pennsylvania, and art critic Jerry Saltz are just enough to make audience members feel smart.… Akhtar… has lots to say about America and the world today. He says it all compellingly, and none of it is comforting.”
—Philip Boroff, Bloomberg Businessweek
“Compelling.… Disgraced raises and toys with provocative and nuanced ideas.”
—Jesse Oxfeld, New York Observer
“A continuously engaging, vitally engaged play about thorny questions of identity and religion in the contemporary world.… In dialogue that bristles with wit and intelligence, Mr. Akhtar… puts contemporary attitudes toward religion under a microscope, revealing how tenuous self-image can be for people born into one way of being who have embraced another.… Everyone has been told that politics and religion are two subjects that should be off-limits at social gatherings. But watching Mr. Akhtar’s characters rip into these forbidden topics, there’s no arguing that they make for ear-tickling good theater.”
—Charles Isherwood, New York Times
“A blistering social drama about the racial prejudices that secretly persist in progressive cultural circles.”
—Marilyn Stasio, Variety
“Terrific.… Disgraced… unfolds with speed, energy and crackling wit.… The evening will come to a shocking end, but before that, there is the sparkling conversation, expertly rendered on the page by Akhtar.… Talk of 9/11, of Israel and Iran, of terrorism and airport security, all evokes uncomfortable truths. Add a liberal flow of alcohol and a couple of major secrets suddenly revealed, and you’ve got yourself one dangerous dinner party.… In the end, one can debate what the message of the play really is. Is it that we cannot escape our roots, or perhaps simply that we don’t ever really know who we are, deep down, until something forces us to confront it? Whatever it is, when you finally hear the word ‘disgraced’ in the words of one of these characters, you will no doubt feel a chill down your spine.”
—Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press
“Offers an engaging snapshot of the challenge for upwardly mobile Islamic Americans in the post-9/11 age.”
—Thom Geier, Entertainment Weekly
“Akhtar digs deep to confront uncomfortable truths about the ways we look at race, culture, class, religion, and sex in this bracingly adult, unflinching drama.… He writes incisive, often quite funny dialogue and creates vivid characters, managing to cover a lot of ground in a mere four scenes and eighty minutes. Akhtar doesn’t offer any solutions to the thorny issues he presents so effectively. What he does is require us to engage them, and that’s a very good and necessary thing.”
—Erik Haagensen, Backstage.com
“Ninety minutes of sharp contemporary theatre at its argumentative, and disturbing, best.”
—Robert McCrum, The Guardian
“Disgraced stands among recent marks of an increasing and welcome phenomenon: the arrival of South Asian and Middle Eastern Americans as presences in our theater’s dramatis personae, matching their presence in our daily life. Like all such phenomena, it carries a double significance. An achievement and a sign of recognition for those it represents, for the rest of us it constitutes the theatrical equivalent of getting to know the new neighbors—something we had better do if we plan to survive as a civil society.”
—Michael Feingold, Village Voice
“It’s a rare work that jolts an audience into cries of pained shock, but Ayad Akhtar’s Pulitzer-winner… does just that. A powerful, challenging, deftly crafted work, this is a bold exploration of race, culture and what it means to be Muslim in post-9/11 America.… A clever, gripping modern American tragedy.”
—Sunday Times
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Author’s Note
Production History
Epigraph
Act One: Scene One
Act One: Scene Two
Act One: Scene Three
Act One: Scene Four
Act One: Scene Five
Act Two: Scene One
Act Two: Scene Two
Act Two: Scene Three
Act Two: Scene Four
Epilogue
The Particular and the Universal: An Interview with Ayad Akhtar
Acknowledgments
About the Author
A Preview of American Dervish
Also by Ayad Akhtar
Praise for The Who & The What
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2014 by Ayad Akhtar
Excerpt from American Dervish copyright © 2012 by Ayad Akhtar
Cover design by Christopher Sergio
Cover copyright © 2014 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: October 2014
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ISBN 978-0-316-32448-9
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