SOURCE: “A Passion of a Vegetable Fashion,” in The Spectator, March 11, 1995, p. 33.

In the following review, Horspool offers an unfavorable assessment of The Black Album, citing Kureishi's “talent for caricature” as weak.

Shahid, the young hero of Hanif Kureishi’s second novel, spends most of his time trying to make his mind up. But the oddest choice he has to face is between his lecturer-lover and a sacred aubergine, which has been written on by Allah (‘it’s me or the enchanted eggplant’, as she puts it).

Kureishi, the author of The Buddha of Suburbia and three screenplays, can apparently put anything (like the morality of playing Mowgli in an adaptation of The Jungle Book, or running a laundrette) in its religious, cultural and political context. It is no accident that ‘aubergine’ is one of the few words that the local Labour council leader, a shameless vote-grabber who...