Description
Book SynopsisOriginal, bold and always funny, Hanif Kureishi is one of Britain’s most popular, provocative and versatile writers.
Born in Bromley in 1954 to an Indian father and white British mother, Kureishi’s life is intimately bound up with the history of immigration and social change in Britain. This is the story of how a mixed-raced child of empire who attended the local comprehensive school found success with a remarkable series of novels and screenplays, including My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia, Intimacy, Venus and Le Week-End. The book also illuminates a larger story, not only of the artist as a young man, but of the recasting of Britain in the aftermath of decolonisation.
Drawing on journals, letters and manuscripts from Kureishi’s unexplored archive, recently acquired by the British Library, and informed by interviews with his family, friends and collaborators, as well with the writer himself, Ruvani Ranasinha sheds new light on how his life animates his work. This first biography offers a vivid portrait of a major talent who has inspired a new generation of writers.
Trade Review'This is a magnificent, meticulous and exhaustive biography, and one worthy of its mercurial subject.’
The Spectator
'Ranasinha succeeds in her aim of appearing definitive, while establishing Kureishi’s significance to British cultural life of the past 50 years.'
The Times
'Ruvani Ranasinha’s Hanif Kureishi: Writing the self is an illuminating biography; the fact that it is also a portrait of modern Britain is a tribute both to the scope of Kureishi’s work and to the thoroughness of Ranasinha’s research.'
The TLS
'Ruvani Ranasinha illuminates the life as well as the work of the beloved writer Hanif Kureishi. This well-researched and exhaustive biography has an aura of completeness.'
Amitava Kumar, author of A Time Outside This Time
'Ruvani Ranasinha's life of Hanif Kureishi is not just an impressively comprehensive portrait of the artist as a young man, it also provides an engrossing snapshot of his times. With insight and sympathy, Ranasinha captures a rare turning-point in the development of our literary tradition. For all the admirers of Kureishi and his work, this must be essential reading.'
Robert McCrum, author of The 100 Best Novels in English
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Table of ContentsPreface
Part One: Origins
Part Two: Plays
Part Three: Films
Part Four: Becoming a novelist
Part Five: Fathers and sons
Part Six: Private Lives, New Beginnings
Part Seven: The turn inwards: writing and psychoanalysis
Part Eight: Love and Hate
Part Nine: Late Style
Afterword
