Hanif Kureishi
Pakistani-British
1954-
Search for works owned by Grinnell College here.
British writer Hanif Kureishi has made his mark in a number of genres, including plays, screenplays, and novels. He is perhaps best known for the scripts of the controversial films My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, but he also gained notice for his 1990 novel The Buddha of Suburbia, for his 1991 film London Kills Me, which he also directed, and for the short novel Intimacy, which he also turned into a film. Kureishi's most popular works generally concern social issues, including racism, class differences, and sexual freedom. "I try to reflect the world as I see it," Kureishi noted of his work to Irene Lacher in the Los Angeles Times. He added, "I'm not doing PR. Does Shakespeare present Hamlet as a nice Danish prince? A writer's job, if we have any job in society, is to tell the truth as we see it, to write about the world as we observe it, and the world is a strange place and people are divided, unusual, wicked and good."
Kureishi was born in Bromley, a suburb of London, England, in 1954. His father was a Pakistani immigrant, his mother English. Kureishi grew up with prejudice because of his background. He related in his autobiographical essay "The Rainbow Sign," published in My Beautiful Laundrette and The Rainbow Sign, that "from the start I tried to deny my Pakistani self" and that "it was a curse and I wanted to be rid of it. I wanted to be like everyone else." As an adolescent, Kureishi watched childhood friends join racist groups and beat up on Pakistani immigrants like those in his family. Such experiences stayed with him and inspired many of his adult works.
For more information check out the display in Burling, or visit his page at Literary Resource Center online...
Related Authors:
Monica Ali (1967-)
Romesh Gunesekera (1954-)
Zadie Smith (1976-)
Ahdaf Soueif (1950-)
