Book description
Three Kingdoms is a blackly entertaining and unsettling detective story
cum parable about the devil in us all, international human trafficking
and the changing state of Europe. As the severed human head of an
Estonian woman is found in a river in Hammersmith, two British
detectives set off in search of her origins in Europe and how she came
to be found dead. Accompanied by a mephistophelian German detective
acting as their guide, they gradually sink deeper and deeper into the
world of prostitution and international human trafficking. Fighting to
cross international borders and language barriers, they enter a
nightmarish world that will change one of them forever. Three Kingdoms
tells the stories of trafficked women, the gangs and the police forces
across Europe that attempt to control them. This dark new thriller by
Simon Stephens, set across three countries, explores an international
business where the goods are not products, but people. Questioning and
undermining not just tenets about the nature of Europe with its old and
new borders, Three Kingdoms also explodes moral certainties. With good
and evil presented not as polarised forces but as disturbingly shifting,
overlapping and contradictory, the play provocatively unbalances
convictions of truth, ethical codes, violence and justice. This edition
also includes a preface with contributions from playwright Simon
Stephens, German director Sebastian Nuebling and Estonian dramaturg Eero
Epner, discussing this uniquely collaborative and tri-lingual project.
Simon Stephens has been the recipient of both the Pearson Award for Best
New Play 2001-2 for his play Port, and the Olivier Award for Best New
Play 2005 for On the Shore of the Wide World. His recent plays include
Harper Regan (National Theatre), Punk Rock (Lyric Hammersmith/Royal
Exchange, Manchester). Pornography (Traverse and Birmingham Rep),
Wastwater (Royal Court and Wiener Festwochen) and The Trial of Ubu
(Hampstead Theatre).
