Junk: A Play

New
Paperback
2017
$21.89

A fast-paced economic thriller that probes the financial deal making behind the mergers and acquisitions boom of the 1980s

The Deal. The Board Room. The Takeover. This is the battleground where titanic egos collide, where modern day kings are made and unmade. It's a world where debt is an asset and assets are excuses for more debt, a world where finance runs the show. An upstart genius hell-bent on rocketing to the top, Robert Merkin has established himself as the most successful junk bond trader in the business. His next move-the take-over of a venerable multinational steel corporation-may signal the end of his reign as the king of finance. But how can he lose at a game when he's the only one making the rules?
With JUNK, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ayad Akhtar takes us back to the hotbed of the '80s, offering us an origin story for the cutthroat world that finance has shaped and a dark, provocative take on the joys and sorrows of capitalist society.

Synopsis

A fast-paced economic thriller that probes the financial deal making behind the mergers and acquisitions boom of the 1980s

The Deal. The Board Room. The Takeover. This is the battleground where titanic egos collide, where modern day kings are made and unmade. It's a world where debt is an asset and assets are excuses for more debt, a world where finance runs the show. An upstart genius hell-bent on rocketing to the top, Robert Merkin has established himself as the most successful junk bond trader in the business. His next move-the take-over of a venerable multinational steel corporation-may signal the end of his reign as the king of finance. But how can he lose at a game when he's the only one making the rules?

With JUNK, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ayad Akhtar takes us back to the hotbed of the '80s, offering us an origin story for the cutthroat world that finance has shaped and a dark, provocative take on the joys and sorrows of capitalist society.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 175
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Published: 30 Nov 2017
ISBN 10: 0316550728
ISBN 13: 9780316550727

Media Reviews

Praise for The Invisible Hand
With The Invisible Hand, Ayad Akhtar solidifies the reputation he forged with Disgraced as a first-rate writer of fierce, well-crafted dramas that employ topicality but are not limited by it.... The prime theme is pulsing and alive: when human lives become just one more commodity to be traded, blood eventually flows in the streets. --Brendan Lemon, Financial Times
Raises probing questions about the roots of the Islamic terrorism that has rattled the world for the last decade and more. --Charles Isherwood, New York Times
A hand-wringing, throat-clenching thriller.... [that] grabs you and won't let go. --Jesse Green, New York Magazine
Confirms the Pakistani-American playwright as one of the theater's most original, exciting new voices.... In this tight, plot-driven thriller, Ahktar again turns hypersensitive subjects into thought-provoking and thoughtful drama. But here he also brings a grasp of money-big money-not to mention the market's unsettling connections to international politics. --Linda Winer, Newsday
Praise for The Invisible Hand
With The Invisible Hand, Ayad Akhtar solidifies the reputation he forged with Disgraced as a first-rate writer of fierce, well-crafted dramas that employ topicality but are not limited by it.... The prime theme is pulsing and alive: when human lives become just one more commodity to be traded, blood eventually flows in the streets. --Brendan Lemon, Financial Times
Raises probing questions about the roots of the Islamic terrorism that has rattled the world for the last decade and more. --Charles Isherwood, New York Times
A hand-wringing, throat-clenching thriller.... [that] grabs you and won't let go. --Jesse Green, New York Magazine
Confirms the Pakistani-American playwright as one of the theater's most original, exciting new voices.... In this tight, plot-driven thriller, Ahktar again turns hypersensitive subjects into thought-provoking and thoughtful drama. But here he also brings a grasp of money-big money-not to mention the market's unsettling connections to international politics. --Linda Winer, Newsday
Early acclaim for JUNK
Forget about all the TV pundits and op-ed columnists droning on about America's problems. Playwright Ayad Akhtar is the diagnostician the nation needs to interpret its faltering health.... In JUNK: THE GOLDEN AGE OF DEBT, his thrilling new play...Akhtar takes on the equally explosive subjects of modern finance and the new religion of money. And once again he provides an unflinchingly candid cross section of attitudes and positions in which our sympathies and antipathies keep shifting along lines that are too complex to be straightforwardly ideological.... What's most impressive about JUNK is the brilliant way Akhtar crunches the social, political and economic data of this greedy new world, a precursor to the way we live today. --Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times
Whip-smart.... An intimate, accessible tale on an epic canvas.... Akhtar writes crackling, rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue like David Mamet, but it's infused with Shakespearean scope and pop-culture references. There are nods to the Bard's Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and history plays, lines from the Bible and the 1987 film Wall Street and the freewheeling exuberance of The Wolf of Wall Street. --Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune
A massively ambitious play. It succeeds magnificently on many levels, and it should head to Broadway where it will be not only close to Wall Street, but even more accessible to those many in the public with a growing fascination in finance, economics, and social policy. --Brad Auerbach, Forbes
JUNK unfolds like a big, blockbuster novel-lots of twists and turns, and goods and evils (okay, mostly evils). It's an epic seduction, in fact, that involves everyone in the piece. At the same time, the playwright underpins the antics with serious themes and key questions. --Jeff Smith, San Diego Reader

Early acclaim for JUNK

Forget about all the TV pundits and op-ed columnists droning on about America's problems. Playwright Ayad Akhtar is the diagnostician the nation needs to interpret its faltering health.... In JUNK: THE GOLDEN AGE OF DEBT, his thrilling new play...Akhtar takes on the equally explosive subjects of modern finance and the new religion of money. And once again he provides an unflinchingly candid cross section of attitudes and positions in which our sympathies and antipathies keep shifting along lines that are too complex to be straightforwardly ideological.... What's most impressive about JUNK is the brilliant way Akhtar crunches the social, political and economic data of this greedy new world, a precursor to the way we live today. --Charles McNulty, Los Angeles Times

Whip-smart.... An intimate, accessible tale on an epic canvas.... Akhtar writes crackling, rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue like David Mamet, but it's infused with Shakespearean scope and pop-culture references. There are nods to the Bard's Merchant of Venice, Julius Caesar and history plays, lines from the Bible and the 1987 film Wall Street and the freewheeling exuberance of The Wolf of Wall Street. --Pam Kragen, San Diego Union-Tribune

A massively ambitious play. It succeeds magnificently on many levels, and it should head to Broadway where it will be not only close to Wall Street, but even more accessible to those many in the public with a growing fascination in finance, economics, and social policy. --Brad Auerbach, Forbes

JUNK unfolds like a big, blockbuster novel-lots of twists and turns, and goods and evils (okay, mostly evils). It's an epic seduction, in fact, that involves everyone in the piece. At the same time, the playwright underpins the antics with serious themes and key questions. --Jeff Smith, San Diego Reader

Maybe, someday, we can live down the 1980s. But not any day soon, if Ayad Akhtar has anything to do with it --Variety
[A] Shakespearean history play of spiraling national consequence. --New York Times
an exceptional work. --Village Voice
It's a modern Shakespeare history war play....We don't have kings and queens in America. What we have are super successful Wall Street tycoons.-- Steven Pasquale, actor
Akhtar smartly captures the amorality and toxicity of greed. --Huffington Post
engrossing from start to finish. --AM New York
With 17 characters, JUNK is bigger in scale than Mr. Akhtar's previous plays, but it bears his signatures-it is fast, funny, ruthless and dark. --Michael Sokolove, New York Times

Author Bio

Ayad Akhtar was born in New York City and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. An award-winning author, playwright, screenwriter, and actor, he is the author of a novel, American Dervish, published in over twenty languages worldwide, and was nominated for a 2006 Independent Spirit Award for best screenplay for the film The War Within. His plays include Disgraced, produced at New York's Lincoln Center Theater in 2012 and on Broadway in 2014 and recipient of the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for Drama; The Who & The What, produced at Lincoln Center Theater in 2014; and The Invisible Hand, produced at New York Theater Workshop in 2014. He has been the recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and Yaddo, as well as commissions from Lincoln Center Theater and the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. He is a graduate of Brown and Columbia Universities with degrees in Theater and Film Directing. He lives in New York City.