Thursday 19 January 2012

January Invasion!


So, this month we met to discuss Jonas Hassen Khemiri's play Invasion!, deftly translated into English by Frank Perry.

I won't spoil the play by giving away the plot; suffice to say it centres around identity and people's expectations around that slipperiest of concepts. It portrays a world in which a single word 'Abulkasem' takes on myriad, and all-encompassing meanings. It plays with the way a single word can embody all of these meanings at once, or change in meaning depending on time, place, and speaker.

Our somewhat rambling discussion on identity politics in the UK, Sweden, the US and the rest of the world got the better of us for a while (maybe it was the half pint of cider), but surely that's the whole point of reading and talking about reading - it makes you think more about the world you know, and the world you don't know!

Have you read Invasion! Has anyone seen the play? Or read the American version? (I want to see how it differs!)


Gratuitous fuzzy picture of Khemiri.

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