Search results for ""Author Hanif Kureishi""

This collection begins in the early 1980s with The Rainbow Sign, which was written as the Introduction to the screenplay of My Beautiful Laundrette. It allowed Kureishi to expand upon the issues raised by the film: race, class, sexuality - issues that were provoked by his childhood and family situation. In the ensuing decades, he has developed these initial ideas, especially as the issue of Islam's relation to the West has become one of the burning issues of the time.Kureishi shows how flexible a form the essay can be - as intellectual as Sontag or Adam Phillips, as informal and casual as Max Beerbohm, as cool and minimalist as Joan Didion, or as provocative as Norman Mailer. As with his fictional work, these essays display Kureishi's ability to capture the temper of the times.

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Gabriel is a fifteen-year-old North London schoolboy trying to come to terms with a new life, after the equilibrium of his family home has been shattered by the ousting of his father. Fending for himself, Gabriel is forced to grow up quickly. But a chance meeting with a seventies rock star crystallises the turbulent emotions inside Gabriel, and helps him to recognise and engage with his rare gift . . .

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With VENUS, Hanif Kureishi turns his piercing gaze onto the pains of old age. Maurice (Peter O'Toole) and Ian (Leslie Phillips) are veteran stage actors whose slow, inevitable decline is disrupted by the arrival in their lives of Ian's niece Jessie (Jodie Whittaker). While Jessie's housekeeping skills make for a bone of contention with Ian, Maurice finds himself attracted to her. Kureishi has crafted a disturbing, wry and profoundly moving swansong for his characters. Also included in this volume is an Introduction by Kureishi in which he describes the inspiration he drew from the Japanese master Tanizaki.

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Hanif Kureishi's cinematic storytelling embraces a wide spectrum of characters from all classes and nationalities, depicting them with compassion, humour and relish, though never fighting shy of controversy. This volume comprises four of Kureishi's screenplays.My Beautiful Laundrette (1985)Omar is a restless young Asian man, caring for his alcoholic father in the hustling London of the mid-1980s. His uncle, a keen Thatcherite, offers Omar an entrepreneurial opportunity to revamp a dingy laundrette, and ambitious Omar rolls up his sleeves, enlisting the assistance of his old school-friend Johnny, who has since fallen in with a gang of neo-fascists. Omar and Johnny soon form an unlikely alliance that leads to business success, as well as other, more intimate surprises.Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987)1980s London, and Sammy and Rosie share an 'open' marriage, strings of lovers, and a bohemian existence amidst inner-city turmoil. Sammy's father, Rafi, formerly a government minister in India, visits London as racial tensions rise with the death of a woman in a police raid. Rafi offers Sammy financial assistance if the couple will leave their 'war zone' behind them and produce grandchildren. But Rafi's own shady past threatens to haunt him.London Kills Me (1991)A weekend in the lives of homeless Clint and his pal Muffdiver, youthful veterans of the streets of London, whose chief source of income derives from selling drugs to the wealthier denizens of Notting Hill. But what Clint wants more than anything else is a proper job, and he's been promised a position as a waiter in a restaurant - on the condition that he can come up with a pair of 'sensible' shoes.My Son the Fanatic (1997)Parvez is a Pakistani cab driver in a northern industrial town who chauffeurs young prostitute Bettina. Their gentle friendship grows more tender as Parvez's home life starts to crumble, his son Farid embracing a fundamentalist sect of Islam and rejecting his father's values. When Farid then involves himself with a group committed to purging the town of corruption, Parvez is compelled to choose where his loyalties lie.

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'It is the saddest night, for I am leaving and not coming back.' Jay is leaving his partner and their two sons. As the long night before his departure unfolds, in an unforgettable, and often pitiless, reflection on their time together he analyses the joys and agonies of trying to make a life with another person.

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'No one else casts such a shrewd and gimlet eye on contemporary life.' - William BoydComic, dark and insightful, What Happened? is Hanif Kureishi's new collection of essays and fiction. No topic is too fringe or too mainstream for this insatiable-and much-loved-author. From social media to the ancient classics, from appraisals of David Bowie to Georges Simenon to Keith Jarrett, this is the latest literary 'event' in a unique body of work that displays Kureishi's characteristic boundless curiosity and wit. What Happened? is as much about the very fact of Kureishi's catholic appetite for culture as his observations and insights themselves, and any new book in his oeuvre is a justification for celebration.

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Jamal Khan, a psychoanalyst in his fifties living in London, is haunted by memories of his teens: his first love, Ajita; the exhilaration of sex, drugs and politics; and a brutal act of violence which changed his life for ever. As he and his best friend Henry attempt to make the sometimes painful, sometimes comic transition to their divorced middle age, balancing the conflicts of desire and dignity, Jamal's teenage traumas make a shocking return into his present life.

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'No one else casts such a shrewd and gimlet eye on contemporary life.' - William BoydComic, dark and insightful, What Happened? is Hanif Kureishi's new collection of essays and fiction. No topic is too fringe or too mainstream for this insatiable-and much-loved-author. From social media to the ancient classics, from appraisals of David Bowie to Georges Simenon to Keith Jarrett, this is the latest literary 'event' in a unique body of work that displays Kureishi's characteristic boundless curiosity and wit. What Happened? is as much about the very fact of Kureishi's catholic appetite for culture as his observations and insights themselves, and any new book in his oeuvre is a justification for celebration.

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In 1981 Hanif Kureishi was voted Most Promising Playwright of the Year by the London Theatre Critics for his plays Borderline and Outskirts. Since then he has gone on to write best-selling fiction (The Buddha of Suburbia, Intimacy) and acclaimed screenplays (My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid). This selection of his original works shows his development as a writer, finding his own subject and establishing his characteristically powerful and humorous style. In his extended and witty introduction, Kureishi looks at his work in the theatre at that time, while assessing the significance of radical British theatre during the 1970s.

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Moving, funny, remarkable' Richard EyreFrom Hanif Kureishi, author of The Buddha of Suburbia, a memoir about the accident that left him paralysedA few days ago, a bomb went off in my life, but this bomb has also shattered the lives of those around me. My partner, my children, my friends.'On Boxing Day 2022, in Rome, Hanif Kureishi had a fall. When he came to, in a pool of blood, he was horrified to realise he had lost the use of his limbs. He could no longer walk, write or wash himself. He could do nothing without the help of others, and required constant care in a hospital. So began an odyssey of a year through the medical systems of Rome and Italy, with the hope of somehow being able to return home, to his house in London.While confined to a series of hospital wards, he felt compelled to write, but being unable to type or to hold a pen, he began to dictate to family members the words which formed in his head. The result w

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I'm going to tell him to pick up his prayer mat and get out of my house.When Parvez's son Ali starts clearing out his bedroom, Parvez assumes he's taking drugs and selling his possessions to pay for them. His fellow taxi drivers are triumphant: they knew something was wrong. Bettina, the prostitute Parvez regularly drives home, tells him what signs to look out for.But nothing is physically different about Ali except that he is growing a beard - and praying five times a day. He condemns his father for drinking alcohol and eating bacon, and assures him that the Law of Islam will rule the world.First published in March 1994, Hanif Kureishi's comedy of assimilation is both uproariously funny and so prescient it's barely funny at all.

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Mamoon is an eminent Indian-born writer who has made a career in England -- but now, in his early seventies, his reputation is fading, his book sales have dried up and his new wife has expensive tastes. Harry, a young writer, is commissioned to write a biography to revitalise Mamoon's career. He greatly admires Mamoon's work and wants to uncover the truth of the artist's life, but Harry's publisher seeks a more salacious tale of sex and scandal to generate headlines. Meanwhile, Mamoon himself is mining a different truth altogether -- but which one of them will have the last word?

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Writing seems to be a problem of some kind. It isn't as if most people can just sit down and start to write brilliantly, get up from the desk, so something else all day, and then, next morning start again without any conflict or anxiety. To begin to write - to attempt to do anything creative, for that matter - is to ask many other questions, not only about the craft itself, but of oneself, and of life. The blank empty page is a representation of this helplessness. Who am I? it asks. How should I live? Who do I want to be?Dreaming and Scheming collects some of the very best of the non-fiction writings by Hanif Kureishi. These include political essays; diaries; accounts of his collaborations in film and television, and above all, exploration of how the life of the mind expresses itself in creative endeavours. Kureishi's energies and insights make this collection essential for admirers of his work, and for anyone who aspires to be a writer.

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Omar is a restless young Asian man, caring for his alcoholic father in the hustling London of the mid-1980s. His uncle, a keen Thatcherite, offers Omar an entrepreneurial opportunity to revamp a dingy laundrette, and ambitious Omar rolls up his sleeves, enlisting the assistance of his old school-friend Johnny, who has since fallen in with a gang of neo-fascists. Omar and Johnny soon form an unlikely alliance that leads to business success, as well as other, more intimate surprises.

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"My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost. . ."Meet the hero of Hanif Kureishi's seminal debut novel, as he dreams of escape from suburban South London, desperate to experience the forbidden fruits which the 1970s seem to offer. When the unlikely opportunity of a life in the theatre announced itself, Karim starts to win the sort of attention he has been craving - albeit with some raucous results.

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This provocative collection of short stories charts the growth of a generation from the liberating irreverence of the late 1970s to the dilemmas of responsibility and fidelity of the 1990s. The stories resonate with Hanif Kureishi's dead-on observations of human passion and folly, his brilliant depiction of seedy locales and magical characters, and his original, wicked sense of humour.

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Hate skews reality even more than love.In the story of a Pakistani woman who has begun a new life in Paris, an essay about the writing of Kureishi's acclaimed film Le Week-End, and an account of Kafka's relationship with his father, readers will find Kureishi also exploring the topics that he continues to make new, and make his own: growing up and growing old; betrayal and loyalty; imagination and repression; marriage and fatherhood. The collection ends with a bravura piece of very personal reportage about the conman who stole Kureishi's life savings - a man who provoked both admiration and disgust, obsession and revulsion, love and hate.

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'Excellent.' New York TimesHanif Kureishi has been writing about the tensions between Islam and the West for over twenty years. In recent times the argument has evolved from one of constructive discussion to one of a refusal to engage - where the bomb speaks louder than the word. This volume collects pieces from Kureishi's work which respond to this change, providing a historical perspective for the times in which we live. 'Kureishi has a particular appreciation for the complexity of modern British Muslim identity that comes from having a mixed-race family . . . Here, Kureishi's experience turns to insight.' Observer

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'Hanif Kureishi's literary memoir explores his relationship with his father, a failed writer. Kurieshi is, of course, hugely successful...' EsquireAmongst a batch of papers, Hanif Kureishi discovered an abandoned manuscript - a novel, written by his father. And so begins a journey which takes him through his father's childhood by the sea in India to an adult life in the suburbs of Bromley. My Ear at His Heart offers remarkable insight into Hanif Kureishi's literary calling, coming from the ashes of his father's own attempts years before. 'This is an ambitious book. Kureshi - free-associating with what feels like unmitigated honesty - successfully conveys the impression that in this book he has actually given us himself.' Sunday Times'Deeply involving, highly intelligent and, in what it doesn't say rather than what it does, profoundly sad.' Evening Standard'I don't think he has done anything as good, in any medium, as this moving and fiercely honest book.' Guardian

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Over the course of the last 12 years, Hanif Kureishi has written short fiction. The stories are, by turns, provocative, erotic, tender, funny and charming as they deal with the complexities of relationships as well as the joys of children.This collection contains his controversial story Weddings and Beheadings, a well as his prophetic My Son the Fanatic, which exposes the religious tensions within the muslim family unit. As with his novels and screenplays, Kureishi has his finger on the pulse of the political tensions in society and how they affect people's everyday lives.

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The Body is a dazzling collection of fiction from Hanif Kureishi, beginning with a novella that delves into the concept of identity, and its root in our physical being. Adam is a middle-aged playwright who accepts a tempting offer to have his mind transported into a younger body for six months. Youth restored, he embarks on an odyssey of physical hedonism, but must then face the dire consequences when he is loath to relinquish his new body . . .

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'I was beginning to love my thief, a man I barely knew, but whom I had trusted and even liked, and who had taken my savings, amongst many other crimes.' A bravura piece of very personal reportage by Hanif Kureishi about the man who stole his life savings. Nearing sixty and needing to plan for his and his children's future, Hanif Kureishi employed an accountant from a reputable firm. When the accountant recommended investing in a property scheme, Kureishi followed his advice - only to find out that the accountant was a fraudster and his entire life savings had vanished. In this thought-provoking account of his conman, Kureishi uses this theft as a way of exploring some of the contradictions and dilemmas of our lives: the true value of money; the role of deception in art; how you can love and hate simultaneously; why the financial world seems to revolve around deceit; and what we might recover from those who have stolen from us.

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John Cheever’s Collected Stories explores the delicate psychological frameworks of 20th century suburbia.WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY HANIF KUREISHIThis outstanding collection by Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist John Cheever shows the power and range of one of the finest short story writers of the last century. Stories of love and of squalor, they include masterpieces such as 'The Swimmer' and 'Goodbye, My Brother' and date from the time of his honourable discharge from the Army at the end of the Second World War.

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When Muddy Waters came to London at the start of the '60s, a kid from Boston called Joe Boyd was his tour manager; when Dylan went electric at the Newport Festival, Joe Boyd was plugging in his guitar; when the summer of love got going, Joe Boyd was running the coolest club in London, the UFO; when a bunch of club regulars called Pink Floyd recorded their first single, Joe Boyd was the producer; when a young songwriter named Nick Drake wanted to give his demo tape to someone, he chose Joe Boyd. More than any previous '60s music autobiography, Joe Boyd's White Bicycles offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. His greatest coup is bringing to life the famously elusive figure of Nick Drake - the first time he's been written about by anyone who knew him well. As well as the '60s heavy-hitters, this book also offers wonderfully vivid portraits of a whole host of other musicians: everyone from the great jazzman Coleman Hawkins to the folk diva Sandy Denny, Lonnie Johnson to Eric Clapton, The Incredible String Band to Fairport Convention.

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As far as Benjamin Braddock's parents are concerned, his future is sewn up. Now he has graduated from college, he will go to Yale or Harvard, get a good job and enjoy a life of money, cocktails and pool parties in the suburbs, just like them. For Benjamin, however, this isn't quite enough. When his parents' friend Mrs Robinson, a formidable older woman, strips naked in front of him and they begin an affair, it seems he might have found a way out. That is, until her daughter Elaine comes into the picture, and things get far more complicated.

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