The Writer
Hanif Kureishi was born in London and grew up in Bromley, Kent. His father came from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after Partition in 1947. His father went to Britain to study Law but soon abandoned his studies, married a local woman and later worked at the Pakistan Embassy.
Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School (where David Bowie had also been a pupil) and after taking his A levels at a local sixth form college, he spent a year studying philosophy before dropping out. Later he attended King's College, London and took a degree in Philosophy. He spent most of the 1980s on the dole in London, writing and partying.
My Beautiful Laundrette,, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British youth in a relationship with a neo-Nazi, was written in 1985 for a film to be directed by Stephen Frears. It won the New York Film Critics´ Best Screenplay Award.
He followed this up with the The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) which won the prestigious Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a successful BBC television series. The following year, 1991, saw the release of the feature film entitled London Kills Me; a film written and directed by Kureishi himself.
The themes of sexuality and cultural identities continued to fascinate Kureishi, but his treatment of them became darker. His short story My Son the Fanatic, about the relationship between a depressed and lonely middle-aged Pakistani immigrant and his contemptuous and increasingly intolerant son, anticipated the fallout of the fatwa pronounced on Salman Rushdie, the radicalization of London mosques and the London metro bombings with startling foresight. His novel Intimacy (1998) however provoked scathing reviews by critics who saw it as a thinly-veiled and misogynistic attack on his ex-wife. A more careful reading of the novel, the account of a man who leaves his family for an uncertain future with an elusive younger lover, reveals an honest, if bleak, depiction of middle-aged male sexuality, vanity and loneliness.
His latest novel, Something to Tell You, was published in 2008. His 1989 novel The Black Album, adapted for the theatre, was performed at the National Theatre in July and August 2009
The Buddha of Suburbia
Karim, ¨¨an Englishman born and bred, almost´´ is the teenage narrator of Kuresihi´s semi-autobiographical first novel, set in the pre-Thatcher ´seventies. Karim can´t wait to get out of the suburbs, mix with bohemians, musicians and artists and experiment sexually with girls and boys, while his father Haroon, bored with commuting, his marriage and his life, starts an affair with a fun-loving open-minded neighbour.
Kureishi brilliantly portrays the casual racism of the times, the emotional blackmail of family life, the deadening boredom of the suburbs, the grandiose fantasies of adolescence and the sparring between the ex-colonised and the ex-colonisers. Stereotypes and projections abound, as both the host population and the first generation of immigrants adjust to each other – and to their perceptions of each other - this time not in India but in England. Kureishi´s father and son seduce English women as a way of ¨´ staring the Empire in the face´´ counting on both their own charm and the ´´English roses´´ own stereotyping of Indians as exotic and erotic. The women in turn use the father and son as a way of rebelling against boring husbands and oppressive fathers.
John Clement Ball comments that "they [Kureishi's works document the actual colonising of London's spaces by its New Commonwealth citizens.´´ Arguably Kureishi explores a decade which redefined London as a thriving multicultural capital, where concepts of Englishness became more fluid, pluralistic and exciting.
Questions to think about while reading
´´We became part of England and yet proudly stood outside it.´´ The book satirizes both assimilation and resistance in the characters of Karim and Jamilla. What political and social strategies do they use to get the lives they want?
The novel has been described as a modern-day Tom Jones, a picaresque tale of sexual adventure and freedom. Is the novel a comedy of manners, a social critique or a novel about growing up and leaving home?
There have been many novels about London. To what extent do these narratives overlap or contrast? Are there as many Londons are there are Londoners? Is the concept of a ´´mainstream´´ narrative hopelessly outdated in a multi-cultural nulti-ethnic, multi-religious society?
To read a recent interview with Hanif Kuresihi go to:
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