The Buddha of Suburbia

Description

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There's quite a bit of activity in Buddha of Suburbia. A bureaucrat becomes a suburban guru who marries a follower with a son who's a punk rocker named Charlie Hero. Consequently, the guru's son is propelled from his bland life into a series of erotic experiences in London. All the while, Hanif Kureishi keeps the tone lively with wry wit. On the description of suburban life: "We were proud of never learning anything except the names of footballers, the personnel of rock groups and the lyrics to 'I Am the Walrus.'" He also bends cultures, classes and genders while blasting the racism of British life in this 1990 Whitbread Prize winner.

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Hanif Kureishi's 'Buddha of Suburbia' - a Post-colonial Bildungsroman

Description

A detailed critical analysis of the novel as a coming-of-age text.

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LOVE IN A BLUE TIME: SHORT STORIES

Product Details

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• ISBN13: 9780684848181
• Accustom: New

Description

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 humor.

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The Black Album

Description

Long before Islamic fundamentalism became a household phrase, Hanif Kureishi began visiting mosques in London and witnessing the flocks of young Asians -- many of them second-generation immigrants -- who were turning to Islam. Kureishi was perplexed by these young people, brought up in secular Britain but intent on choosing a strict religious code that denied them the pleasures of the society in which they lived.

First published in 1995, The Black Album is Kureishi's raucous, exuberant, and prophetic examination of this new phenomenon. His protagonist Shahid, from a Pakistani immigrant family, is perilously fond of sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll. A student at a dismal community college in London, he wants to please the conservative Muslims in the flat next door but is enthralled by the gorgeous Deedee Osgood, a radical, hard-partying college professor with a penchant for sex in taxis.

Also included in this new edition of The Black Album is "My Son the Fanatic," Kureishi's brilliant short story, published in The New Yorker and made into an award-winning film. "My Son the Fanatic" reveals the shifting values between a father and son -- two generations of immigrants struggling between assimilation and separatist fundamentalism.

Available together for the first time, The Black Album and "My Son the Fanatic" are more timely and relevant than ever -- exhilarating and prescient writing from one of the most celebrated voices in British fiction and film.

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Something to Tell You: A Novel

Description

THE STUNNINGLY ORIGINAL, ICONOCLASTIC, AWARD-WINNING AUTHOR OF THE BUDDHA OF SUBURBIA RETURNS WITH HIS FINEST, MOST EXUBERANT NOVEL.

In the early 1980s Hanif Kureishi emerged as one of the most compelling new voices in film and fiction. His movies My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and his novel The Buddha of Suburbia captivated audiences and inspired other artists. In Something to Tell You, he travels back to those days of hedonism, activism and glorious creativity. And he explores the lives of that generation now, in a very different London.

Jamal is middle-aged, though reluctant to admit it. He has an ex-wife, a son he adores, a thriving career as a psychoanalyst and vast reserves of unsatisfied desire. "Secrets are my currency," he says. "I deal in them for a living." And he has some of his own. He is haunted by Ajita, his first love, whom he hasn't seen in decades, and by an act of violence he has never confessed.

With great empathy and agility, Kureishi has created an array of unforgettable characters -- a hilarious and eccentric theater director, a covey of charming and defiant outcasts and an ebullient sister who thrives on the fringe. All wrestle with their own limits as human beings; all are plagued by the past until they find it within themselves to forgive.

Comic, wise and unfailingly tender, Something to Tell You is Kureishi's best work to date, brilliant and exhilarating.

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Intimacy

Description

A novel by the author of "The Buddha of Suburbia" and "My Beautiful Laundrette" which analyzes the agonies and joys of being connected to another person. Jay, who is leaving his partner and their two sons, reflects on the vicissitudes of his relationship with Susan.

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Hanif Kureishi's fourth novel made many reviewers uneasy on its first appearance in the U.K., because it cuts so painfully near to the bone. If a novelist's first duty is to tell the truth, then the author has done his duty with unflinching courage. Intimacy gives us the thoughts and memories of a middle-aged writer on the night before he walks out on his wife and two young sons for of a younger woman. A very modern man, without political convictions or religious beliefs, he vaguely hopes to find fulfillment in sexual love. No one is spared Kureishi's cold, penetrating gaze or lacerating pen. "She thinks she's feminist, but she's just bad-tempered," the unnamed narrator says of his abandoned wife. A male friend advises him, "Marriage is a battle, a terrible journey, a season in hell, and a reason for living."

At the heart of Intimacy is this terrible paradox: "You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them." Male readers will wince with recognition at the narrator's hatred of entrapment and domesticity, and his implacable urge towards freedom, escape, even loneliness. Female readers may find it a truly horrific revelation. Kureishi is only telling it like it is, in staccato sentences of pinpoint accuracy. By far the author's best yet: a brilliant, devastating work. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk

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