Hanif Kureishi

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Template:AboutTemplate:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Infobox writer Hanif Kureishi Template:Postnominals (born 5 December 1954) is a British-Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, and novelist. He is known for his Oscar-nominated screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette and novel The Buddha of Suburbia.

Early life and education

Hanif Kureishi was born on 5 December 1954<ref name=whoswho>Template:Who's Who Subscription needed.</ref> in Bromley, South London, to a Pakistani father, Rafiushan (Shanoo) Kureishi, and an English mother, Audrey Buss.<ref Name=Times/><ref Name=McCrum /><ref name=Ballou>Emily Ballou, "Whims of the father", The Australia, 15 November 2008.</ref> His father was from a wealthy family based in Madras (now Chennai), whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947.<ref name=":0">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Rafiushan's father was a colonel and doctor in the British Indian Army. Rafiushan went to the same Cathedral School attended by Salman Rushdie, and the family was later close to the Bhuttos. Rafiushan's brother (Hanif's uncle), Omar Kureishi, was a newspaper columnist and manager of the Pakistan cricket team.<ref Name=McCrum />

Rafiushan travelled to the UK in 1950<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}Template:Cbignore</ref> to study law, but he ran out of money and needed to take a desk job at the Pakistani high commission instead.<ref name=McCrum>Template:Cite interview</ref><ref name=Ballou /> There he met his wife-to-be, Audrey Buss.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated, with his submissions to publishers turned down.<ref name=McCrum />

Hanif Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School and studied for A-levels at Bromley College of Technology.<ref Name=college>Official website Template:Webarchive. Retrieved 14 January 2016.</ref> While at this college, he was elected as student union president (1972). Some of the characters from his semi-autobiographical novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, are drawn from this period.<ref name=did>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University, then withdrew.<ref Name=college/> He later attended King's College London<ref name=whoswho/> and earned a degree in philosophy.<ref Name=college/>

Career

Kureishi started his career in the 1970s as a pornography writer,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Interview with Hanif Kureishi, The Book Show, Episode 18, Sky Arts.</ref> under the pseudonyms Antonia French<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and Karim.<ref>Nahem Yousaf. Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia: a reader's guide, p. 8.</ref>

He went on to write plays for the Hampstead Theatre, Soho Poly, and by the age of 18, was with the Royal Court.<ref Name=McCrum />

He wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980s London, for a film directed by Stephen Frears. The screenplay, especially the racial discrimination experienced, contained elements from Kureishi's experiences as the only Pakistani student in his class at school.Template:Citation needed It won the New York City Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. Template:Cn He also wrote the screenplay for Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987).Template:Cn

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

In 1991 his feature film titled London Kills Me, which he wrote and directed, was released.Template:Citation needed

Kureishi's 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 recently had 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 into the film Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two awards at the Berlin Film Festival.Template:Cn The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.Template:Citation needed

Kureishi's drama The Mother was adapted as a film by Roger Michell, released in 2003. It tells the story of a cross-generational relationship with a reversal of expected roles: a 70-year-old English grandmother seduces her daughter's boyfriend.Template:Cn

Kureishi wrote the 2006 screenplay Venus, for the film starring Peter O'Toole.Template:Citation needed A novel titled Something to Tell You was published in 2008.Template:Citation needed

His 1995 novel The Black Album, adapted for the theatre, was performed at the National Theatre in July and August 2009.Template:Cn

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).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Kureishi has also written non-fiction, including an autobiography, My Ear at His Heart. In it, he describes his relationship with his father, Rafiushan, who died in 1991.<ref>Cathy Galvin, "Hanif Kureishi: the pariah of suburbia" Template:Webarchive, The Telegraph, 13 December 2012.</ref>

Major influences on Kureishi's writing include P.G. Wodehouse and Philip Roth.<ref Name=McCrum />

His work has often been cited in academic studies of postcolonial literature and British cultural identity, with My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia in particular becoming set texts in university curricula in the UK, US, and Australia. Scholars have highlighted his blending of comedy, sexuality, and racial politics as both groundbreaking and controversial, with critics noting that Kureishi’s characters often challenge stereotypes of British Asians while also reflecting the tensions of assimilation and cultural hybridity.<ref name="ObserverInterview">Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2024, the BBC aired In My Own Words, a documentary directed by Nigel Williams that traced Kureishi’s life and career using archival footage and new interviews.<ref name="IrishTimesDoc">Template:Cite news</ref> The same year, Shattered was shortlisted for the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Biography, with judges praising its “unflinching insight into vulnerability and resilience.”<ref name="GuardianShattered2" />

Other activities

In October 2013, Kureishi was appointed as a professor in the creative writing department at Kingston University in London, where he was a writer in residence.<ref Name=Times>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal life

Kureishi was living in West London in 2016.<ref Name=McCrum/><ref Name=college/> His entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as "music, cricket, sitting in pubs".<ref name=whoswho/>

Although he acknowledges his father's Pakistani roots, Kureishi rarely visits Pakistan. A 2012 visit sponsored by the British Council was his first trip to Pakistan in 20 years.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Kureishi's uncle was the writer, columnist and Pakistani cricket commentator and team manager Omar Kureishi.<ref>Andreas Athanasiades, "Re-imagining Identity: Revisiting Hanif Kureishi's My Beautiful Laundrette" Template:Webarchive, University of Cyprus.</ref> The poet Maki Kureishi was his aunt.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

He is bisexual.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He has twin boys from his relationship with film producer Tracey Scoffield<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and a younger son from a previous relationship.<ref name=":0" />

Kureishi's family have accused him of exploiting them with thinly disguised references in his work, with his sister Yasmin writing a letter to The Guardian about it.<ref Name=McCrum /><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> She says that his descriptions of her family's working-class roots are fictitious, and their father was not a bitter old man. Yasmin takes issue with her brother for his thinly-disguised autobiographical references in his first novel The Buddha of Suburbia, as well as for the image of his own past that he portrays in newspaper interviews. Hanif's father felt that Hanif had robbed him of his dignity in The Buddha of Suburbia, and didn't speak to him for many months.<ref Name=McCrum /> There was further furore with the publication of Intimacy, as the story was assumed to be autobiographical.<ref Name=McCrum /><ref Name=college/>

In early 2013, Kureishi lost his life savings in a suspected fraud.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2014, the British Library announced that it would be acquiring the archive of Kureishi's documents spanning 40 years of his writing life. The body of work was to include diaries, notebooks and drafts.<ref>"Hanif Kureishi – My Beautiful Film Career" Template:Webarchive, British Library, 2014.</ref>

On 26 December 2022, Kureishi fell while on holiday in Rome, sustaining spinal injuries that left him tetraplegic and unable to move his limbs.<ref name="GuardianFall">Template:Cite news</ref> He has described experiencing a near-death state in the minutes after the fall and credited his partner, Isabella d'Amico, with helping him remain calm until emergency services arrived.<ref name="BBCNearDeath">Template:Cite news</ref> Following surgery and a long rehabilitation, Kureishi began documenting his recovery in a widely read Substack blog,<ref name="Channel4Recovery">Template:Cite news</ref> later collected in his 2024 memoir Shattered, which interweaves diary entries, reflections on disability, and commentary on the creative process after physical trauma.<ref name="GuardianShattered">Template:Cite news</ref>

In September 2024, the BBC released a biographical documentary "In My Own Words" by his close friend Nigel Williams in which the writer revisits his life and career via the medium of old archive footage.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Recognition, awards and honours

Kureishi was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to Literature and Drama.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:London Gazette</ref> In the same year, The Times included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He was also elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2008.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

He has also won a number of literary awards, including:Template:Citation needed

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Works

Novels

  • 1990 The Buddha of Suburbia, London: Faber and Faber
  • 1995 The Black Album, London: Faber and Faber
  • 1998 Intimacy, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2001 Gabriel's Gift, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2003 The Body, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2008 Something to Tell You, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2014 The Last Word, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2017 The Nothing, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2019 What Happened?, London: Faber and Faber

Story collections

  • 1997 Love in a Blue Time, London: Faber and Faber
  • 1999 Midnight All Day, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2019 "She Said, He Said", The New Yorker

Collection of stories and essays

  • 2011 Collected Essays, Faber and Faber<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation

|CitationClass=web }}</ref>

  • 2015 Love + Hate: Stories and Essays, Faber & Faber

Plays and screenplays

  • 1980 The King and Me, London: Faber and Faber
  • 1981 Outskirts, London: Faber and Faber
  • 1981 Borderline, London: Faber and Faber
  • 1983 Birds of Passage, London: Faber and Faber
  • 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
  • 2004 When The Night Begins, 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, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2004 My Ear at His Heart, London: Faber and Faber
  • 2005 The Word and the Bomb , London: Faber and Faber
  • 2014 A Theft: My Con Man , London: Faber and Faber
  • 2024 Shattered: A Memoir, London: Penguin

As editor

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

Screenplays

Story basis only

Producer

  • 2006 Souvenir

See also

References

Template:Reflist

Further reading

  • 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
  • Colin MacCabe and Hanif Kureishi, "Hanif Kureishi and London", AA Files, No. 49 (Spring 2003), pp. 40–49, published by: Architectural Association School of Architecture
  • Kaleta, Kenneth C, Hanif Kureishi: Postcolonial Storyteller, University of Texas Press, 1998 Template:ISBN

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