Description
Book SynopsisPowerful and disturbing, this version of the Hamlet story is set in a modern Middle Eastern state whose leader has just died, to be replaced by his brother, a ruthless, Westernized dictator who juggles petro-dollars, arms dealers, and democratic slogans in an attempt to quell the rising tides of Islamic extremism. Presenting a composite of many Arab concerns that affect peoples from the Arabian Gulf to the Atlantic and beyond, it is a concrete and poetic formulation of an Arab viewpoint, combining aspects of the Arab oral-poetry tradition with the rhetoric of modern-day politics. It is Hamlet as pure, dangerous politics.
Trade Review"Al Bassam's astonishing text, which rarely echoes Shakespeare's words, takes the story of Hamlet and reworks it in a rich new poetic version, full of what sounds like Koranic and classical Arab imagery. Some of the results are electrifying" -- Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman "Al-Hamlet is a superbly constructed dramatisation of a society's descent into fundamentalism and chaos" -- Sunday Herald
