Hanif Kureishi | |
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Born | Bromley, Kent, England | 5 December 1954
Occupation | Playwright, screenwriter, novelist, film director |
Education | Bromley College of Technology |
Alma mater | King's College London |
Period | 1976–present |
Literary movement | Postcolonial literature |
Notable works | My Beautiful Laundrette The Buddha of Suburbia |
Children | 3 |
Signature | |
Hanif Kureishi CBE (born 5 December 1954) is a British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and novelist. He is known for his novels My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia .
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.
Rafiushan traveled to the UK in 1950 [5] to study law, but he ran out of money and needed to take a desk job at the Pakistani embassy instead. [3] [4] There he met his wife-to-be, Audrey Buss, "a young lower-middle-class suburban woman". [6] He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated, "eking out a life of permanent disappointment, writing novels on the kitchen table, but getting turned down." [3] [3] After the couple married, they settled in Bromley, where their son Hanif Kureishi was born.
In an interview, Kureishi notes:
My [paternal] grandfather, an army doctor, was a colonel in the British Indian Army. Big family. Servants. Tennis court. Cricket. Everything. My father went to the Cathedral School that Salman Rushdie went to. Later, in Pakistan, my family were close to the Bhuttos. My uncle Omar was a newspaper columnist and the manager of the Pakistan cricket team...My grandfather, the colonel, was terrifying. A hard-living, hard-drinking gambler. Womanising. Around him it was like The Godfather . They drank and they gossiped. The women would come and go. [3]
Hanif Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School and studied for A-levels at Bromley College of Technology. [7] While at this college, he was elected as student union president (1972). Some of the characters from his semi-autobiographical novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, are drawn from this period. [8] He spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University, then withdrew. [7] Later he attended King's College London [1] and earned a degree in philosophy. [7]
Kureishi started his career in the 1970s as a pornography writer, [9] [10] under the pseudonyms Antonia French [11] and Karim. [12] He went on to write plays for the Hampstead Theatre, Soho Poly, and by the age of 18, was with the Royal Court. [3]
He wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980s London for a film directed by Stephen Frears. The screenplay, especially the racial discrimination experienced, contained elements from Hanif's experiences as the only Pakistani student in his class at school.[ citation needed ] It won the New York City Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He also wrote the screenplay for Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987). His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel and was made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie. 1991 saw the release of the feature film titled London Kills Me , written and directed by Kureishi.[ citation needed ]
His 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 Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox). It was controversial for its explicit sex scenes. 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, which won a joint First Prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival. It showed a cross-generational relationship with a reversal of expected roles: a 70-year-old English grandmother (played by Anne Reid) seduces her daughter's boyfriend (played by Daniel Craig), a 30-year-old craftsman. Explicit sex scenes were shown in realistic drawings only, thus avoiding censorship. He wrote the 2006 screenplay Venus which starred Peter O'Toole.[ citation needed ]
A novel titled Something to Tell You was published in 2008.[ citation needed ]
His 1995 novel The Black Album, adapted for the theatre, was performed at the National Theatre in July and August 2009. 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). [13]
Kureishi has written non-fiction, including autobiography. As noted by Cathy Galvin in The Telegraph: "But at the core of his life, as described in his memoir My Ear at His Heart is Kureishi’s relationship with his father, Rafiushan, who died in 1991." [14]
Major influences on Kureishi's writing include P.G. Wodehouse and Philip Roth. [3]
Kureishi, who is bisexual, [15] lives in West London. [3] [7] His entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as "music, cricket, sitting in pubs". [1]
He has twin boys (from his relationship with film producer Tracey Scoffield [16] ) and a younger son. Although he acknowledges his father's Pakistani roots (originating in Madras, in British India, present-day Chennai, India), he rarely visits Pakistan. Upon a 2012 visit sponsored by the British Council, he acknowledged that it was his first trip to Pakistan in 20 years. [17]
Kureishi's uncle was the writer, columnist and Pakistani cricket commentator and team manager Omar Kureishi. [18] The poet Maki Kureishi was his aunt. [19]
Kureishi's family have accused him of exploiting them with thinly disguised references in his work; Kureishi has denied the claims. His sister Yasmin has accused him of selling her family "down the line". She wrote, in a letter to The Guardian , that if her family's history had to become public, she would not stand by and let it be "fabricated for the entertainment of the public or for Hanif's profit". [3] [20] She says that his description of her family's working-class roots are fictitious. Their grandfather was not "cloth cap working class", their mother never worked in a shoe factory, and their father, she says, 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. She wrote: "My father was angry when The Buddha of Suburbia came out as he felt that Hanif had robbed him of his dignity, and he didn't speak to Hanif for about a year." [3] Kureishi and his father did not speak for many months during the controversy. [3] There was further furore with the publication of Intimacy, as the story was assumed to be autobiographical. [3] [7]
In early 2013, Kureishi lost his life savings, intended to cover "the ups and downs of being a writer", in a suspected fraud. [21] In October of that year, Kureishi was appointed as a professor in the creative writing department at Kingston University in London, where he was a writer in residence. [2] However, at Bath Literature Festival in March 2014, he stated that creative writing courses were a "waste of time" and commented that 99.9% of his students were talentless. [22] [ better source needed ]
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] Kureishi stated 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]
Kureishi was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to Literature and Drama. [28] [29] In the same year, The Times included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945. [30]
He has also won a number of literary awards, including:[ citation needed ]
Kureishi's films include: [34] [35]
Roshan Seth is a British-Indian actor, writer and theatre director who has worked in the United Kingdom, United States and India. He began his acting career in the early 1960s in the UK, but left acting the following decade and moved to India to work as a journalist. In the 1980s, he rose to prominence for his comeback performance as Jawaharlal Nehru in Richard Attenborough's Academy Award-winning film Gandhi, which brought him a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and reignited his interest in acting.
Sir Stephen Arthur Frears is a British director and producer of film and television, often depicting real life stories as well as projects that explore social class through sharply-drawn characters. He has received numerous accolades including three BAFTA Awards, and a Primetime Emmy Award as well as nominations for two Academy Awards. In 2008, The Daily Telegraph named Frears among the 100 most influential people in British culture. In 2009, he received the Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. He received a knighthood in 2023 for his contributions to the film and television industries.
Intimacy is a 2001 erotic drama film directed by Patrice Chéreau from a screenplay he co-wrote with Anne-Louise Trividic, based on stories by Hanif Kureishi. It stars Kerry Fox and Mark Rylance. The film is an international co-production between France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, featuring a soundtrack of pop songs from the 1970s and 1980s. Intimacy contains an unsimulated fellatio scene by Fox on Rylance. A French-dubbed version features voice actors Jean-Hugues Anglade and Nathalie Richard.
My Beautiful Laundrette is a 1985 British romantic comedy-drama film directed by Stephen Frears from a screenplay by Hanif Kureishi. The film was one of the first films released by Working Title Films. The film is set in London during the Thatcher years, as reflected in the complex, and often comical, relationships between members of the Pakistani and English communities. The story focuses on Omar, a young Pakistani man living in London, and his reunion and eventual romance with his childhood friend Johnny, now a street punk. The two become the caretakers and business managers of a launderette originally owned by Omar's uncle Nasser.
The Buddha of Suburbia is the 19th studio album by the English musician David Bowie, originally released on 8 November 1993 through Arista Records in the United Kingdom and Europe. The project originated following an interview between Bowie and novelist Hanif Kureishi during a press tour for Black Tie White Noise (1993), where Bowie agreed to compose music for an upcoming adaptation of Kureishi's novel The Buddha of Suburbia (1990). After making basic tracks, Bowie decided to turn the project into a full album. Working with musician Erdal Kızılçay, recording took place at Mountain Studios in Montreux, Switzerland and was completed in six days; Mike Garson contributed piano overdubs.
The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) is a novel by English author Hanif Kureishi, which won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel. The novel has been translated into 20 languages and was also made into a four-part drama series by the BBC in 1993.
The Buddha of Suburbia is a British four-part television serial, directed by Roger Michell, originally broadcast on BBC Two in November 1993. Based on the 1990 novel of the same name by Hanif Kureishi, the series starred Naveen Andrews as the main character, Karim Amir. Its theme song, as well as other original music for the series, was written and performed by David Bowie.
Rita Wolf is an American British actress born in Kolkata, India.
David James Bamber is an English actor. He has worked in television and theatre. He is an Associate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
Gordon Warnecke is a British actor of Indo-Guyanese and German descent. He is known for his role as Omar in the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette, co-starring as the lover of Johnny. Other film credits include Franco Zeffirelli's Young Toscanini and Hanif Kureishi's London Kills Me.
Ayub Khan Din is a British writer and actor. He wrote the BAFTA, BIFA and London Film Critics Circle award-winning film East Is East (1999), adapted from his 1996 Olivier-nominated play of the same name. His 2008 comedy play Rafta, Rafta... won the Olivier Award. He went on to write the film sequel West Is West (2010). On television, he created the Channel 4 comedy-drama Ackley Bridge (2017–2022).
Roger Michell was a South African-born British theatre, television and film director. He was best known for directing films such as Notting Hill and Venus, as well as the 1995 made-for-television film Persuasion.
Mohammed Hanif is a British Pakistani writer and journalist who writes a monthly opinion piece in The New York Times.
My Son the Fanatic is a short story written by Hanif Kureishi first published in The New Yorker in 1994. It was reprinted in Kureishi's 1997 collection of short stories, Love in a Blue Time, and also as a supplement to some editions of The Black Album, and in 1998 as a standalone edition. The short story was also adapted into a film of the same title.
My Son the Fanatic is a 1997 British comedy drama film directed by Udayan Prasad. It was written by Hanif Kureishi as an adaptation of his short story My Son the Fanatic.
The 52nd New York Film Critics Circle Awards honored the best filmmaking of 1986. The winners were announced on 15 December 1986 and the awards were given on 25 January 1987.
Pakistani English literature refers to English literature that has been developed and evolved in Pakistan, as well as by members of the Pakistani diaspora who write in the English language. English is one of the official languages of Pakistan and has a history going back to the British colonial rule in South Asia ; the national dialect spoken in the country is known as Pakistani English. Today, it occupies an important and integral part in modern Pakistani literature. Dr. Alamgir Hashmi introduced the term "Pakistani Literature [originally written] in English" with his "Preface" to his pioneering book Pakistani Literature: The Contemporary English Writers as well as through his other scholarly work and the seminars and courses taught by him in many universities since 1970's. It was established as an academic discipline in the world following his lead and further work by other scholars, and it is now a widely popular field of study.
Kevin Loader is a British film and television producer. Since 1996, he and co-owner Roger Michell have run a London-based production company, Free Range Films, through which the pair have made several feature films directed by Michell, including The Mother, Enduring Love, Venus, Hyde Park on Hudson, and Le Week-end. Their most recent film is an adaptation by Michell of Daphne Du Maurier's My Cousin Rachel. The company is also developing and producing film and television projects with other directors. Loader was awarded the Bafta for Best Television Serial in 2015 for The Lost Honour of Christopher Jefferies.
The Black Album is the second novel written by British author Hanif Kureishi. Published in 1995 by Faber and Faber, the novel was adapted for the stage in 2009 and explores Muslim fundamentalism, youth culture, sex, drugs, and alienation in a young British-Pakistani man's world that is being pulled in different directions by a modern lifestyle of London and traditional Muslim culture.
My Beautiful Laundrette is a play by Hanif Kureishi adapted from his screenplay for the 1985 film of the same name. The film was highly successful and became internationally known.
"I write really in order to keep myself alive, to interest myself to find out what I think"