Alexander the Great

In this work Mustafa Mahmoud presents a four-act play on the story of history’s most famous conqueror, who was never defeated. The work does not aim at a purely historical narrative of the Macedonian commander’s conquests; it centres on dissecting the psychological dimensions of the lust for power and taking apart the concept of human ambition when it turns into arrogance and deadly greed that destroy their possessor. The events begin by highlighting Alexander’s conquests, which covered Babylon, Egypt and Syria and reached India, then trace the decisive moment of his death from fever in Babylon while still a young man, and end with the struggle over his legacy and lands, as his younger brother Arrhidaeus formally takes the throne under the guardianship of the close commander Perdiccas. The author later stated that he used this historical text as a symbolic political allusion to the regime of Gamal Abdel Nasser and the consequences of political expansion in that era.