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Revision as of 12:56, 24 April 2012

Hanif Kureishi
Hanif Kureishi speaking in the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University on September 8, 2008.
Hanif Kureishi speaking in the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University on September 8, 2008.
Born (1954-12-05) 5 December 1954 (age 69)
Bromley, London, England
OccupationPlaywright, screenwriter, novelist, film director
Period1976 - present
Literary movement
Postcolonial literature
Signature
Website
http://www.hanifkureishi.com/

Hanif Kureishi CBE (born December 5, 1954) is an English playwright, screenwriter and filmmaker, novelist and short story writer. The themes of his work have touched on topics of race, nationalism, immigration, and sexuality. In 2008, The Times included Kureishi in their list of "The 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[1]

Biography

Kureishi was born in Kent to a Pakistani father and an English mother (Audrey Buss). His father, Rafiushan, was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947. After his parents married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born.

He attended Bromley Technical High School and studied for A levels at Bromley College of Technology. While at this college he was elected as Student Union President (1972) and some of the characters from his semi-autobiographical work "The Buddha of Suburbia" are from this period. He went on to spend a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University before dropping out. Later he attended King's College London and took a degree in philosophy.

The poet Maki Kureishi is his aunt.[2]

Career

Kureishi started his career in the '70s as a pornography writer,[3][4] under the pseudonyms Antonia French[5] and Karim[6].

He wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980s London for a film directed by Stephen Frears. It won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.

His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie.

The next year, 1991, saw the release of the feature film entitled London Kills Me; a film written and directed by Kureishi himself.

His novel Intimacy (1998) revolved around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons after feeling physically and emotionally rejected by his wife. This created some controversy as Kureishi himself had recently left his own partner (the editor and producer Tracey Scoffield) and two young sons; it was assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical. In 2000/2001 the novel was adapted to a movie Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film, and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox). It was controversial for its explicit sex scenes. The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.

His family have accused him of exploiting them with thinly disguised references in his work; Kureishi has denied the claims. His sister Yasmin has accused him of selling her family "down the line". She wrote, in a letter to The Guardian, that if her family's history had to become public, she would not stand by and let it be "fabricated for the entertainment of the public or for Hanif's profit".[7] She says that his description of her family's working class roots are fictitious. Their grandfather was not "cloth cap working class", their mother never worked in a shoe factory, and their father, she says, was not a bitter old man.

Yasmin takes up issues with her brother not merely for his thinly disguised autobiographical references in his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, but also for the image of his own past that he portrays in newspaper interviews. She wrote: "My father was angry when The Buddha of Suburbia came out as he felt that Hanif had robbed him of his dignity, and he didn't speak to Hanif for about a year."

Kureishi's drama The Mother was adapted to a movie by Roger Michell, which won a joint First Prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival. It showed a cross-generational relationship with changed roles: a seventy-year-old English lady and grandmother (played by Anne Reid) who seduces her daughter's boyfriend (played by Daniel Craig), a thirty-year-old craftsman. Explicit sex scenes were shown in realistic drawings only, thus avoiding censorship.

His 2006 screenplay Venus saw Oscar, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, Broadcast Film Critics Association and Golden Globe nominations for Peter O'Toole in the best actor category.

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.

In 2009, he donated the short story Long Ago Yesterday to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. His story was published in the 'Earth' collection.[8]

In May 2011 he was awarded the second Asia House Literature Award on the closing night of the Asia House Literary Festival where he discussed his Collected Essays (Faber).[9]

Kureishi is married, with twin boys, a younger son, and a parrot called Amis. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.

Bibliography

Novels

Story collections

  • 1997 Love in a Blue Time London: Faber and Faber.
  • 1999 Midnight All Day. London: Faber and Faber.

Plays and screenplays

  • 1988 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 1991 London Kills Me. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 1996 My Beautiful Laundrette and other writings. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 1997 My Son The Fanatic. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 1999 Hanif Kureishi Plays One. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 1999 Sleep With Me. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 2002 Collected Screenplays Volume I. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 2003 The Mother. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 2007 Venus. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 2009 The Black Album (adapted from the novel). London: Faber and Faber.

Nonfiction

  • 2002 Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on Writing and Politics
  • 2004 My Ear at His Heart. London: Faber and Faber.
  • 2005 Word And The Bomb . London: Faber and Faber.

As editor

  • 1995 The Faber Book of Pop. London: Faber and Faber.

Critical works about Kureishi

  • Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Hanif Kureishi (Contemporary World Writers). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
  • Ranasinha, Ruvani. Hanif Kureishi (Writers and Their Work). Devon: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 2002.
  • Thomas, Susie (ed). Hanif Kureishi (Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism). Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
  • Buchanan, Bradley. Hanif Kureishi (New British Fiction). Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

Filmography

Screenplays

Story basis only

2001 Intimacy

Producer

2006 Souvenir

Notes

  1. ^ The 50 greatest British writers since 1945. 5 January 2008. The Times. Retrieved on 2010-02-20.
  2. ^ B. J. Moore-Gilbert (2001). Hanif Kureishi. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719055355.
  3. ^ The New York Times, 10 Aug 2008
  4. ^ Interview with Hanif Kureishi, The Book Show, Episode 18, Sky Arts.
  5. ^ Biography of Hanif Kureishi at Postcolonial Studies Website of English Department of Emory University
  6. ^ Pg 8. Nahem Yousaf. Hanif Kureishi's The buddha of suburbia: a reader's guide
  7. ^ “Author's Sister Writes Next Chapter in Kureishi Family Feud,” Poets & Writers, March 11, 2008
  8. ^ Oxfam: Ox-Tales
  9. ^ http://www.diplomatmagazine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=434&Itemid=

See also

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