The Black Album

Synopsis

Adapted for the Stage

<i>Religion is for the benefit of the masses, not for brain-box types like you.

Those simpletons require strict rules for living, otherwise they would still think the earth sits on three fishes.

But you mind-wallahs must know it's a lot of balls.</i>

An Asian kid from Kent goes to college in London and teams up with a sympathetic group of anti-racists.

But it's 1989, the year of the fatwa, and as Shahid begins a hedonistic affair with his lecturer, his radical Muslim friends want to steer him away from the decadence of the West.

<i>We're not blasted Christians.

We don't turn the other buttock.

We will fight for our people who are being tortured anywhere - in Palestine, Afghanistan, Kashmir, East End!</i>

Hanif Kureishi's witty stage adaptation of his strikingly prescient and acclaimed novel, <i>The Black Album</i>, humorously considers how the events of 1989 have shaped today's world, where fundamentalism battles liberalism.

A co-production with Tara Arts, <i>The Black Album </i>premiered at the National Theatre, London, in July 2009.