Shahid, a young man at a second-rate London college, after a less-than-ideal high school career, finds himself torn between his own future in the form of radical lecturer Deedee Osgood and the growing fervor of the Muslim community in the form of his conservative Muslim neighbors. A novel by Hanif Kureishi. (276 pages)
Level: B

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This edition costs just  kr. 29,50 ex. moms as long as we have stock.
(When this offer is sold out the same book will still be available, though at a higher price.)

In this literary autobiography Hanif Kureishi offers a remarkable insight into the birth of a writer — himself. This family story tells how he found his own literary calling from the ashes of his father's failed attempts in the past. The starting point of the memoir is Kureishi's discovery of an abandoned manuscript that recounts his father's childhood in Bombay with the world turning upside down and India splitting in two along religious lines. A family that had lived in India for generations now had to accept a Pakistani identity. And so begins a journey which takes Kureishi through his father's privileged childhood by the sea in Bombay to his adult life hidden away in the suburbs of Bromley — his days spent as a minor official in the Pakistan embassy in London, his nights writing prose, hopeful of one day receiving literary recognition. Along the way this book raises a range of issues, not least the contrast between the rigid religious and family structures and expectations of the India and Pakistan his parents knew with Kureishi's own increasingly liberal Britain — a contrast that has helped to shape his own outlook.
 (242 pages)
Level: A/B

In this screenplay Hanif Kureishi looks at the pains of old age. Maurice and Ian are veteran stage actors whose slow, inevitable decline is disrupted by the arrival in their lives of Ian's niece Jessie. While Jessie's house-keeping skills become a bone of contention between her and Ian, Maurice, on the other hand, finds himself attracted to Jodie and seeks a more intimate relationship with her. The dialogue between them is, by turns, humorous, painful and touching as Youth struggles with Age. Also included in this volume is an Introduction by Kureishi in which he reveals the inspiration for the screenplay in the work of the Japanese master Tanizaki. This volume includes an introduction to “Venus” by Kureishi and and the short story “Weddings and Beheadings”. The film version of “Venus” starred Peter O'Toole, Leslie Philips and Jodie Whittaker. (Screenplay: 107 pages)
Level: B (well-suited to mature students)