Like Kureishi's earlier novel, The Buddha of
Suburbia, The Black Album deals with the issues surrounding growing up in
London as a young man of Asian background. It is set just over a decade later,
in the summer of 1989. It is a darker novel; the setting is rather more sordid
(student digs in Kilburn rather than a rich house in West London), and the
forces of racism against Sahid are now matched by the
growing strength of Islamic fundamentalism, in the year that the fatwah was declared against Salman
Rushdie.
The clash between Islam and Western liberal culture is one of the main
themes of the novel. As a student, Sahid is being
taught the value of the intellect, that censorship is a crime, and the vague
Marxism common among British intellectuals. At the college, there is a group of
Islamic fundamentalists; to begin with, Sahid values
being part of their group, as it is putting him in touch with the religion and
culture of his forbears (though, as his sister-in-law reminds him, the upper
classes in Pakistan viewed Islam mainly as a way to keep the lower classes
under control). The third force in his life is the drug culture which came out
of the raves that made 1988 known as a second 'summer of love'.
The forces confusing Sahid are symbolised and
concentrated in the three most impartant people in
his life: his tutor and lover Deidre (Deedee) Osgood;
Riaz, the guru of the Islamic group' and Chili, his brother. His conflicting loyalties come to a
head over a demonstration by the students at which the Satanic Verses is to be
burned; this arouses Sahid's unhappiness with some of
the ideas of Riaz's group, as a book lover and an
admirer of Rushdie's earlier Midnight's Children. The tensions this creates
lead to the group discovering his relationship with Deedee
and the drug taking, neither considered to be actions appropriate for a
committed fundamentalist Muslim.
It is clear that Kureishi has little sympathy
for the fundamentalists; this antipathy of a provocative author of fiction
towards anyone who advocates bookburning is understandable.
It is quite easy to provoke contempt for them in his readers - a scene where
one of the other members of the group asks Sahid to
tell him what value a book has, and responses to the reply that they make you
think by questioning the value of thinking is one example. The novel generally
is a convincing portrayal of the rootlessness
probably felt by many British Asians.
The title comes from an album by Prince, itself a response to the
Beatles' White Album proclaiming his own racial identity.
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Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Giuseppe Improta
imgiu@alumni.uv.es
Universitat de Valčncia
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