Hanif Kureishi

This article is about the British playwright and screenwriter. For the Indian street art artist and designer, see Hanif Kureshi.

Hanif Kureishi CBE (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 CBE
Kureishi in 2008
Born	(1954-12-05) 5 December 1954 (age 70) Bromley, Kent, England
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

Early life and education

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 was 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]

Hanif Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School and studied for A-levels at Bromley College of Technology.^[8] 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.^[9]

He spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University, then withdrew.^[8] He later attended King's College London^[1] and earned a degree in philosophy.^[8]

Career

Kureishi started his career in the 1970s as a pornography writer,^[10][11] under the pseudonyms Antonia French^[12] and Karim.^[13]

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 Kureishi'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. ^{[citation needed]} He also wrote the screenplay for Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987).^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]}

In 1991 his feature film titled London Kills Me, which he wrote and directed, was released.^{[citation needed]}

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]}

Kureishi wrote the 2006 screenplay Venus, for the film starring 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.^{[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]

Major influences on Kureishi's writing include P.G. Wodehouse and Philip Roth.^[3]

Other activities

In October 2013, Kureishi was appointed as a professor in the creative writing department at Kingston University in London, where he was a writer in residence.^[2]

Personal life

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]

Recognition, awards and honours

Kureishi was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours for services to Literature and Drama.^[30][31] In the same year, The Times included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.^[32]

He has also won a number of literary awards, including:^{[citation needed]}

• 1980 Thames Television Playwright Award, The Mother Country
• 1981 George Devine Award, Outskirts
• 1986 New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette
• 1986 Nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette
• 1987 Nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette
• 1990 Whitbread First Novel Award, The Buddha of Suburbia
• 2007 National Short Story Competition, shortlist for "Weddings and Beheadings"
• 2010 PEN/Pinter Prize
• 2013 Outstanding Achievement in the Arts at The Asian Awards^[33]

Written works

Novels

• 1990 The Buddha of Suburbia, London: Faber and Faber
• 1995 The Black Album, London: Faber and Faber
• 1998 Intimacy, London: Faber and Faber
• 2001 Gabriel's Gift, London: Faber and Faber
• 2003 The Body, London: Faber and Faber
• 2008 Something to Tell You, London: Faber and Faber
• 2014 The Last Word, London: Faber and Faber
• 2017 The Nothing, London: Faber and Faber
• 2019 What Happened?, London: Faber and Faber

Story collections

• 1997 Love in a Blue Time, London: Faber and Faber
• 1999 Midnight All Day, London: Faber and Faber
• 2019 "She Said, He Said", The New Yorker

Collection of stories and essays

• 2011 Collected Essays, Faber and Faber^[34][35]
• 2015 Love + Hate: Stories and Essays, Faber & Faber

Plays and screenplays

• 1980 The King and Me, London: Faber and Faber
• 1981 Outskirts, London: Faber and Faber
• 1981 Borderline, London: Faber and Faber
• 1983 Birds of Passage, London: Faber and Faber
• 1988 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, London: Faber and Faber
• 1991 London Kills Me, London: Faber and Faber
• 1996 My Beautiful Laundrette and other writings, London: Faber and Faber
• 1997 My Son the Fanatic, London: Faber and Faber
• 1999 Hanif Kureishi Plays One, London: Faber and Faber
• 1999 Sleep with Me, London: Faber and Faber
• 2002 Collected Screenplays Volume I, London: Faber and Faber
• 2003 The Mother, London: Faber and Faber
• 2004 When The Night Begins, London: Faber and Faber
• 2007 Venus, London: Faber and Faber
• 2009 The Black Album (adapted from the novel), London: Faber and Faber

Nonfiction

• 2002 Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on Writing and Politics, London: Faber and Faber
• 2004 My Ear at His Heart, London: Faber and Faber
• 2005 The Word and the Bomb , London: Faber and Faber
• 2014 A Theft: My Con Man , London: Faber and Faber
• 2024 Shattered: A Memoir, London: Penguin

As editor

• 1995 The Faber Book of Pop. London: Faber and Faber

Filmography

Kureishi's films include:^[36][37]

Screenplays

• 1985 My Beautiful Laundrette
• 1987 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
• 1991 London Kills Me (and director)
• 1993 The Buddha of Suburbia (television miniseries, based on the novel)
• 1997 My Son the Fanatic (based on his own short story of the same title)
• 1999 The Escort (with Michel Blanc)
• 2003 The God of Small Tales (short) (with Akram Khan)
• 2003 The Mother (adapted from the play)
• 2006 Venus
• 2007 Weddings and Beheadings (2007)
• 2013 Le Week-End

Story basis only

• 2001 Intimacy

Producer

• 2006 Souvenir