Winner of the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Drama

"An intense and gripping new drama . . . the kind of new play we desperately need: well-informed and unafraid of the world's brutalities."--David Cote, Time Out New York

A rain forest bar and brothel in the brutally war-torn Congo is the setting for Lynn Nottage's extraordinary play, Ruined. The establishment's shrewd matriarch, Mama Nadi, keeps peace between customers from both sides of the civil war, as government soldiers and rebel forces alike choose from her inventory of women, many already "ruined" by rape and torture when they were pressed into prostitution.

Inspired by interviews she conducted in Africa with Congolese refugees, Nottage has crafted an engrossing story with humor and song served alongside its postcolonial and feminist politics in the rich theatrical tradition of Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage.