Ali Hussein

Collection of Plays Ali Hussein

"In this collection of three plays, writer Ali Hussein invites us on a bricolage journey through time, subjecting colonialism and migration... Battus explores the first King of Cyrenaica's (now Eastern Libya) mystical quest from Ancient Greece to the throne in a tale of deceit, death and glory. Hussein's second play, Cortes, is a remarkable depiction of the one the first phases of American colonisation by the Spanish, dramatizing one the 16th century's most accomplished conquistadors. Cortes, responsible for the fall of the Aztec Empire, led the infamous 1518 expedition to Mexico fuelled on greed for the land's apparent hidden treasures... Set in a New York cemetery, United in Death brings us into the modern day. A black man, an Arab Muslim, a Jew, a Brit, an Irish and a New Yorker find themselves discussing the philosophy of life in an urban purgatory." - Sherif Dhaimish