Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi was born in Bromley, a South London suburb, in December 1954. His mother was British; his father, an immigrant from India with family in Pakistan, was a civil servant whose true obsession was writing novels. The younger Kureishi read philosophy at King’s College of the University of London, where he embarked on a career as a playwright. His play Outskirts won the George Devine Award in 1981, and in 1982 he became writer-in-residence at the prestigious Royal Court Theatre. In the mid-1980s he turned to screenwriting, debuting with My Beautiful Laundrette (1984), which garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. Other films followed: Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987); London Kills Me (1991), which he directed; and My Son the Fanatic (1997), based on one of his short stories. The Buddha of Suburbia was Kureishi’s first novel. He would subsequently write three...