THE PULITZER Prize judges have unearthed a gem in Disgraced, Ayad Akhtar's blistering tale of tangled identity.

Corporate lawyer Amir Kapoor's carefully constructed world falls apart around him in the course of a coruscating dinner party.

As the thinly veiled prejudices of those closest to him are exposed, his own foundations come crashing down.

The result is a primal scream from a man suffocating in the absence of everything he thought he could trust.

Akhtar takes an archaeologist's brush to the idea of self and the role our cultural heritage and the perceptions of those around us have to play in making us who we are.

The result is a shocking but never gratuitous evening, packed with sparky dialogue and mordant humour - a worthy winner of this year's Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Amir is a corporate lawyer, with a swanky New York apartment, who has rejected and hidden his Muslim upbringing to help him forge a successful career.

But when his artist wife starts dabbling in Islam for her latest project, and Amir is called on to defend a local imam accused of funding terrorists, the cracks in his carefully constructed world begin to show.

Things build to a crescendo at the dinner party from hell, in which cultural tourism, the roots of power and the dichotomy between religion as a tribal relic and as an unbeatable tool for explaining the immensity of life are all on the menu.

To paraphrase former Apprentice cadidate Stuart 'The Brand' Baggs, Disgraced doesn't just hold up a mirror to society, it holds up a whole hall of mirrors - and brings them crashing down at the same time.

* Disgraced is at the Bush Theatre until June 22.