Hanif KureishiCBE (born 5 December 1954) is a British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and novelist. He is known for his film My Beautiful Laundrette and novel The Buddha of Suburbia.
Hanif Kureishi was born on 5 December 1954[1] in Bromley, South London, to a Pakistani father, Rafiushan (Shanoo) Kureishi, and an English mother, Audrey Buss.[2][3][4] His father was from a wealthy family based in Madras (now Chennai), whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947.[5] 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 were later close to the Bhuttos. Rafiushan's brother (Hanif's uncle), Omar Kureishi, was a newspaper columnist and manager of the Pakistan cricket team.[3]
Rafiushan travelled to the UK in 1950[6] to study law, but he ran out of money and needed to take a desk job at the Pakistani high commission instead.[3][4] There he met his wife-to-be, Audrey Buss.[7] He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated, with his submissions to publishers turned down.[3]
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.[citation needed] The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.[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.[citation needed]
His 1995 novel The Black Album, adapted for the theatre, was performed at the National Theatre in July and August 2009.[citation needed]
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).[14]
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.[15]
Kureishi was living in West London in 2016.[3][8] His entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as "music, cricket, sitting in pubs".[1]
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.[16] Kureishi's uncle was the writer, columnist and Pakistani cricket commentator and team manager Omar Kureishi.[17] The poet Maki Kureishi was his aunt.[18]
He is bisexual.[19] He has twin boys from his relationship with film producer Tracey Scoffield[20] and a younger son from a previous relationship.[5]
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.[3][21] 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.[3] There was further furore with the publication of Intimacy, as the story was assumed to be autobiographical.[3][8]
In early 2013, Kureishi lost his life savings in a suspected fraud.[22]
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.[23]
On 26 December 2022, Kureishi was hospitalised following a fall in Rome, which left him with spinal injuries and unable to move his limbs.[24] According to Kureishi, the fall triggered a near-death experience. He was convinced he was going to die while in hospital,[25] later saying that his partner, Isabella d'Amico, helped keep him calm and saved his life.[26] He has since written about the fall and his recovery process on social media and in a blog.[27] His detailed memoir, including diary entries on the accident, Shattered, was published in 2024.[28]
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.[29]
↑ Donadio, Rachel (8 August 2008). "My Beautiful London". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 5 December 2021. Retrieved 5 December 2021.
↑ Interview with Hanif Kureishi, The Book Show, Episode 18, Sky Arts.
↑ Sharma, Surbhi (May 2017) [Originally published Fall 1997]. "Kureishi, Hanif". Postcolonial Studies @ Emory. Archived from the original on 6 April 2015.
↑ Nahem Yousaf. Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia: a reader's guide, p. 8.
↑ Gow, April. "Asia House". Diplomat Magazine. Archived from the original on 3 October 2011. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
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 ISBN9780292743335
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