Playwright, screenwriter, novelist and
film-maker Hanif Kureishi was born in Bromley, Kent in 1954 and read
philosophy at King's College, London. His first play,
Soaking the Heat, was performed at the Royal Court Theatre
in London in 1976 and was followed in 1980 by The Mother
Country, for which he won the Thames TV Playwright Award. In 1981
his play Outskirts won the George Devine Award and in 1982 he
became Writer in Residence at the Royal Court Theatre.
His screenplay for the film My Beautiful Laundrette,
directed by Stephen Frears, was nominated for an Academy Award. The
film was critically acclaimed for its sensitive depiction of a
homosexual relationship between a gay skinhead and a young Asian man.
He also wrote the screenplays for Sammy and Rosie Get
Laid and London Kills Me (1991), which he also
directed. His film My Son the Fanatic was adapted from his
short story included in Love in a Blue Time (1997). The film
was first shown at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. His play Sleep
With Me (1999) was first performed at the National Theatre in
London in 1999, and was followed by When the Night Begins
(2004), produced at the Hampstead Theatre in 2004.
Kureishi's first novel was the semi-autobiographical The Buddha
of Suburbia, published in 1990. Karim, the novel's young hero ('an
Englishman born and bred - almost'), like Kureishi, has a Pakistani
father and an English mother. The novel describes Karim's struggle for
social and sexual identity, a comic coming-of-age novel and a satirical
portrait of race relations in Britain during the 1970s. It won the
Whitbread First Novel Award and was produced by the BBC in 1993 as a
four-part television series.
His second novel, The Black Album (1995), explores some of
the issues facing the Muslim community living in Britain in the 1980s.
Love in a Blue Time, his first collection of short stories,
focuses on a series of characters working in the media.
Intimacy (1998), a novella, is a painful account of a man's
decision to leave his partner and two young sons. It was produced as a
film in 2001 starring Mark Rylance and Kerry Fox. His second short
story collection, Midnight All Day (1999), continues to explore
very personal issues about human relationships and sexual desire.
Gabriel's Gift (2001) tells the story of a 15-year-old
schoolboy whose artistic skills enable him to survive the trauma of his
parents' separation. Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on Writing
and Politics, a collection of Hanif Kureishi's non-fiction,
including essays and diary fragments, as well as a new collection of
short fiction, The Body and Other Stories, were both published
in 2002. The Word and the Bomb (2005), is also a collection of
non-fictional writings. Hanif Kureishi's latest works are the play,
Venus (2007), and the novel, Something to Tell
You (2008). He became a CBE in 2007, in recognition
of his services to literature and drama.
