Kureishi, Hanif

(British, 1954– )

Kureishi writes plays, screenplays, short stories, and novels. The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) is set in 1970s’ Bromley, Kent, where Kureishi grew up. Karim is the son of an English mother and Indian father. When his father becomes a spiritual guru to white middle-class suburbanites, Karim embarks on a series of erotic teenage adventures. Kureishi explores the racial conflicts experienced by Karim's generation, and treats teenage sexuality with playful wit, strongly evoking the youth culture of 1970s’ Britain. The debates and culture of a particular place and time are also captured in The Black Album (1995), a thriller set in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, amidst the pulsating London rave scene. Shahid moves to London after his father's death to further his education and finds himself involved in talk of liberalism and fundamentalism. His relationship with Professor Dedee Osgood fundamentally changes his life. Intimacy (1998) is a novella narrated by a man who is leaving his wife and children, and is personal and confessional in tone.

Roddy Doyle, Meera Syal, Timothy Mo  DJ