Explore the latest books of this year!
Bookbot

Hanif Kureishi

    December 5, 1954

    Hanif Kureishi is celebrated for his incisive explorations of identity, sexuality, and cultural clashes, often focusing on the lives of young people navigating the spaces between British and Asian cultures. His prose is marked by a raw honesty and sharp social critique that dissects the complexities of modern life. Kureishi masterfully intertwines personal experience with broader societal themes, creating works that are both provocative and deeply human. His writing reflects his unique perspective as the son of a Pakistani father and an English mother, growing up in London.

    Hanif Kureishi
    Collected Stories
    The Faber Book of Pop
    Shattered
    The Mother
    Outskirts and Other Plays: The King and Me, Borderline, Birds od Passage
    Music at the Limits
    • Shattered

      • 336 pages
      • 12 hours of reading

      The book is characterized by its blend of humor and emotional depth, showcasing remarkable storytelling that resonates with readers. It captures poignant moments while also delivering laughter, making it a compelling read that balances light-heartedness with significant themes. The narrative is crafted to evoke a range of emotions, leaving a lasting impression on its audience.

      Shattered2024
      4.0
    • A new paperback edition of Hanif Kureishi's wide-ranging and thought-provoking essays.

      Collected Essays2021
      3.6
    • What Happened?

      • 208 pages
      • 8 hours of reading

      'No one else casts such a shrewd and gimlet eye on contemporary life.' - William BoydComic, dark and insightful, What Happened? is Hanif Kureishi's new collection of essays and fiction.

      What Happened?2021
      3.3
    • The New Uncanny

      • 226 pages
      • 8 hours of reading

      Performing a deft metaphorical evisceration of Sigmund Freud’s classic 1919 essay that delved deeply into the tradition of horror writing, this freshly contemporary collection of literary interpretations reintroduces to the world Freud’s compelling theory of das unheimliche —or, the uncanny. Specifically designed to challenge the creative boundaries of some of the most famed and respected horror writers working today—such as A. S. Byatt, Christopher Priest, Hanif Kureishi, Frank Cottrell Boyce, Matthew Holness, and the indomitable Ramsey Campbell—this anatomically precise experiment encapsulates what the uncanny represents in the 21st century. Masterfully narrated with the benefit of unique perspectives on what exactly it is that goes bump in the night, this chilling modern collective is not only an essential read for fans of horror but also an insightful and intriguing introduction to the greats of the genre at their gruesome best.

      The New Uncanny2018
      3.4
    • The Nothing

      • 176 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      Hanif Kureishi's short, sharp tale of revenge is diabolical fun Fiona Wilson The Times

      The Nothing2017
      3.2
    • Love + Hate

      • 240 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      Tells the story of a Pakistani woman who has begun a new life in Paris, an essay about the writing of author's acclaimed film Le Week-End, and an account of Kafka's relationship with his father, readers will find Kureishi also exploring the topics that he continues to make new, and make his own.

      Love + Hate2016
      3.4
    • Mamoon is an eminent Indian-born writer who has made a career in England - but now, in his early 70s, his reputation is fading, sales have dried up, and his new wife has expensive taste.Harry, a young writer, is commissioned to write a biography to revitalise both Mamoon's career and his bank balance. Harry greatly admires Mamoon's work and wants to uncover the truth of the artist's life. Harry's publisher seeks a more naked truth, a salacious tale of sex and scandal that will generate headlines. Meanwhile Mamoon himself is mining a different vein of truth altogether.Harry and Mamoon find themselves in a battle of wills, but which of them will have the last word?The ensuing struggle for dominance raises issues of love and desire, loyalty and betrayal, and the frailties of age versus the recklessness of youth.Hanif Kureishi has created a tale brimming with youthful exuberance, as hilarious as it is touching, where words have the power to forge a world.

      The Last Word2014
      2.7
    • In ›Blau ist die Liebe‹ thematisiert Hanif Kureishi die menschlichen Sehnsüchte und Abgründe, indem er die Suche nach Erfüllung durch Sex und exzessives Leben schildert. Die Protagonisten erreichen jedoch nie die ersehnte Nähe. Kureishi erzählt leidenschaftlich und fesselnd von der paradoxen Natur der Seele.

      Blau ist die Liebe. Erzählungen2010
    • Collected Stories

      • 688 pages
      • 25 hours of reading

      The essential collection from one of Britain's most celebrated and controversial writers.

      Collected Stories2010
      3.8
    • Music at the Limits

      Three Decades of Essays and Articles on Music

      • 352 pages
      • 13 hours of reading

      With a foreword by Daniel BarenboimMusic at the Limits is the first book to bring together three decades of Edward Said's essays and articles on music.

      Music at the Limits2008
      4.2
    • Jamal is a successful psychoanalyst haunted by his first love and a brutal act of violence from which he can never escape. Looking back to their coming of age in the 1970s, he and his friends face an encroaching middle age with the traumas of their youth still unresolved in this vibrant and expansive novel.

      Something to Tell You2008
      3.3
    • My son the fanatic

      • 174 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      Hanif Kureishi, selber in einem pakistanisch-englischen Elternhaus geboren, schildert in 'My Son the Fanatic' den bis zum totalen Zerwürfnis führenden Konflikt zwischen dem aus Pakistan stammenden Vater Parvez und seinem Sohn Farid. Der Sohn, der als Sittenwächter auftritt, wirft dem liberal gesinnten Vater Unmoral und Prinzipienlosigkeit vor. Farids Rebellion gegen die westliche Wertewelt lässt ihn zum Fundamentalisten werden. Ungekürzte und unbearbeitete Textausgabe in der Originalsprache, mit Übersetzungen schwieriger Wörter am Fuß jeder Seite, Nachwort und Literaturhinweisen.

      My son the fanatic2007
      3.4
    • The Word and the Bomb

      • 100 pages
      • 4 hours of reading

      The outbreak of the Iraq war and its aftermath, plus the bombings in London, have stimulated Hanif Kureishi to write about the great divide between the East and the West - the gulf between fundamentalist Islam and Western values. This book is a collection of his controversial writings.

      The Word and the Bomb2005
      3.6
    • My Ear at His Heart

      • 256 pages
      • 9 hours of reading

      'Hanif Kureishi's literary memoir explores his relationship with his father, a failed writer. Kurieshi is, of course, hugely successful...' Esquire'This is an ambitious book. Kureshi - free-associating with what feels like unmitigated honesty - successfully conveys the impression that in this book he has actually given us himself.' Sunday Times'Deeply involving, highly intelligent and, in what it doesn't say rather than what it does, profoundly sad.' Evening Standard'I don't think he has done anything as good, in any medium, as this moving and fiercely honest book.' Guardian

      My Ear at His Heart2004
      3.6
    • "Mi chiamo Karim Amir e sono un vero inglese, più o meno." Comincia così "Il Budda delle periferie", romanzo con il quale Hanif Kureishi esordiva nella narrativa nel 1990, dopo aver scritto le sceneggiature di "My beautiful Laundrette" e "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid" e dopo aver scritto e diretto "London Kills Me". Il libro è un racconto di formazione che narra le peripezie sentimentali e le avventure di vita di Karim, adolescente metà inglese e metà indiano nella periferia londinese degli anni Settanta.

      Il Budda delle periferie2003
    • The Mother

      • 128 pages
      • 5 hours of reading

      'Kureishi's screenplay is one of his most focused and engaging since My Beautiful Laundrette.' Allan Hunter, Screen International At sixty-five years of age, May fears that life has passed her by - that she has become just another invisible old lady whose days are more or less numbered. When she and her husband travel down from the north to visit their grown-up children in west London, she finds them characteristically inattentive. But then her husband's unexpected death pulls the ground from under her, and she subsequently embarks on a passionate affair with Darren, a man half her age, who is renovating her son's house and sleeping with her daughter, Paula. In the midst of this tumultuous situation, May begins to understand that it can take a lifetime to feel truly alive.

      The Mother2003
      3.9
    • The Body

      • 266 pages
      • 10 hours of reading

      What if you were middle-aged and were offered the chance to trade in your sagging flesh for a much younger and more pleasing model? This is the situation in which the main character of The Body finds himself. Taking the plunge, he embarks on an odyssey of hedonism, but soon finds himself regretting what he has left behind as the responsibilities he thought he had sloughed off now begin to come home to him. Sinister forces are pursuing him, wanting possession of his 'body', and he finds himself in a no-man's-land, uncertain which way to turn. Praise for Hanif Kureishi's previous collection, Midnight All Day:

      The Body2002
      3.6
    • Intimacy and Other Stories

      • 187 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      Intimacy - now a film - analyzes the agonies and joys of being connected to another person. Jay, who is leaving his partner and their two sons, reflects on the vicissitudes of his relationship with Susan. This volume includes two short stories from Love in a Blue Time and Midnight All Day.

      Intimacy and Other Stories2001
      3.6
    • My beautiful laundrette

      • 165 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      Seit Stephen Frears 1985 die Geschichte „über einen schwulen Pakistani, der einen Waschsalon betreibt“, verfilmte, gilt Kureishi als einer der wichtigsten multikulturellen Autoren Großbritanniens. Die Themen Rassenkonflikte, Homosexualität, Klassenschranken, soziale Gegensätze, Jugendarbeitslosigkeit und das vom Thatcherismus gepredigte Streben nach wirtschaft- lichem Erfolg werden innerhalb einer bewegenden Liebesgeschichte unaufdringlich, charmant und fern jeder Schwarzweißmalerei dargestellt. Ungekürzte und unbearbeitete Textausgabe in der Originalsprache, mit Übersetzungen schwieriger Wörter am Fuß jeder Seite, Nachwort und Literaturhinweisen. Sprachen: Deutsch, Englisch

      My beautiful laundrette2001
      3.3
    • Gabriel's Gift

      • 178 pages
      • 7 hours of reading

      The protagonist of Hanif Kureishi's delightful novel is Gabriel, a fifteen-year-old North London schoolboy trying to come to terms with a new life, after the equilibrium of his family home has been shattered by the ousting of his father. Fending for himself, as well as providing emotional support to his confused (and confusing) parents, Gabriel is forced to grow up quickly. The only support he can draw upon is from his remembered twin brother, Archie, and from his own 'gift', which is accompanied by sensations that urge him into areas of life requiring the utmost courage and faith. A chance visit to seventies rock star Lester Jones crystallizes the turbulent emotions inside Gabriel, and helps him to recognize and engage with his gift . . . 'A charming, light-textured fable about talent, about how single-minded creativity might embrace and even be buoyed by the heartbreaking muddle of everyday life.' Observer

      Gabriel's Gift2001
      3.1
    • Midnight all day

      • 224 pages
      • 8 hours of reading

      A collection of stories that depicts a lost generation of men: those shaped by the sixties, disoriented by the eighties and bereft of a personal and political map in the nineties.

      Midnight all day1999
      3.4
    • Love in a blue time

      • 224 pages
      • 8 hours of reading

      Love in a Blue Time is Hanif Kureishi's first collection of short fiction, gathering ten stories that explore identity and its relationship to sexuality, ethnicity, and gender. The stories are set in the post-Thatcher Britain of the mid-1990s, presenting a vision of a London depressed by economic stagnation, social disintegration, and the ubiquity of mass-mediated culture. Although Kureishi's exploration of these themes is rooted in a specific space and time, his book has broader resonances. Its exploration of the radicalization of Muslim youth in Britain became particularly pertinent after September 11, 2001, and the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its treatment of relationships would be developed in Kureishi's later work, notably his controversial 1998 novella Intimacy.

      Love in a blue time1997
      3.5
    • The Faber Book of Pop

      • 896 pages
      • 32 hours of reading

      This acclaimed collection charts the course of Pop from its underground origins through its low and high art phases to its current omnipresence; it takes in fiction, reportage, fashion, art and fantasy as filtered through pop music and includes work by Michael Bracewell, Angela Carter, Nick Cohn, Bob Dylan, Simon Garfield, Nelson George, Germaine Greer, Peter Guralnick, John Lennon, Norman Mailer, Greil Marcus, Iggy Pop, Neil Tennant, Lou Reed, Simon Reynolds, Hunter S. Thompson, Nick Tosches, Andy Warhol, Tom Wolfe and Malcolm X, amongst others. Covering more than 50 years of writing from 1942 on, The Faber Book of Pop is the most stimulating collection of writing on popular music ever published.

      The Faber Book of Pop1996
      3.9
    • The Black Album

      • 163 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      Shahid, a young man from the provinces, comes to London after the death of his father. He finds himself embroiled in a battle between liberalism and fundamentalism in a London so noisily exuberant there is scarcely room for his arguments.

      The Black Album1995
      3.5
    • Hanif Kureishi was voted the Most Promising Playwright of the Year in 1981 by the London Theatre Critics for his plays "Borderline" and "Outskirts". This selection of plays shows his development as a writer from his own perspective and from the perspective of the British theatre of the 1970s.

      Outskirts and Other Plays: The King and Me, Borderline, Birds od Passage1992
      3.7
    • The Buddha of Suburbia

      • 288 pages
      • 11 hours of reading

      An anarchic coming-of-age novel that explores and celebrates Britain in the seventies.

      The Buddha of Suburbia1990
      3.8
    • Intimacy

      • 155 pages
      • 6 hours of reading

      Hanif Kureishi's fourth novel made many reviewers uneasy on its first appearance in the U.K., because it cuts so painfully near to the bone. If a novelist's first duty is to tell the truth, then the author has done his duty with unflinching courage. Intimacy gives us the thoughts and memories of a middle-aged writer on the night before he walks out on his wife and two young sons for of a younger woman. A very modern man, without political convictions or religious beliefs, he vaguely hopes to find fulfillment in sexual love. No one is spared Kureishi's cold, penetrating gaze or lacerating pen. "She thinks she's feminist, but she's just bad-tempered," the unnamed narrator says of his abandoned wife. A male friend advises him, "Marriage is a battle, a terrible journey, a season in hell, and a reason for living." At the heart of Intimacy is this terrible paradox: "You don't stop loving someone just because you hate them." Male readers will wince with recognition at the narrator's hatred of entrapment and domesticity, and his implacable urge towards freedom, escape, even loneliness. Female readers may find it a truly horrific revelation. Kureishi is only telling it like it is, in staccato sentences of pinpoint accuracy. By far the author's best yet: a brilliant, devastating work. --Christopher Hart, Amazon.co.uk

      Intimacy1988
      3.6