Hanif Kureishi

Crónica del fin del amor y el comienzo del odio, la novela de Kureishi es una consistente, inteligente reflexión sobre los desencantos de la madurez. Jay es un escritor y guionista cinematográfico de cuarenta y pocos años. Tiene todo lo que se puede desear a su edad: una carrera exitosa ha sido nominado al Oscar por uno de sus guiones, una mujer ambiciosa e inteligente que trabaja en la industria editorial, dos hijos pequeños a los que quiere, una hermosa casa donde cada dia, mientras Susan marcha a su trabajo, el se queda a escribir. Pero despues de seis años de vida en comun, Jay ha decidido que aquello se acaba. Hoy es la ultima noche de una etapa ya concluida de su vida. Hace tiempo que viene pensandolo, y mañana se marchara de casa para siempre, aunque Susan todavia no lo sabe. Cuando ella se vaya al trabajo, Jay pondra unas pocas cosas en una maleta y sin que nadie lo vea se ira a vivir temporalmente a casa de Victor, un amigo de su misma edad que ya lleva algun tiempo divorciado. Es una decision que le pone entre la espada y la pared; abandonar a sus hijos le resulta insoportable, pero quedarse significa resignarse a la infelicidad cotidiana, a una rutinaria vida de la que pasion y placer parecen haberse ausentado definitivamente.¿Por que un hombre deja de amar a una mujer? Cronica del fin del amor y el comienzo del odio, la novela de Kureishi es una consistente, inteligente reflexion sobre los desencantos de la madurez, las casi insalvables dificultades de la vida en pareja, las mezquindades, las negociaciones, las claudicaciones que nos impone la vida.

Un libro sincero, desgarrador, conmovedor. La escritura como salvavidas. En la Navidad de 2022, mientras pasaba las vacaciones en Roma con su pareja, Isabella, Hanif Kureishi sufrió un desvanecimiento y se desplomo. Al recuperar la consciencia se encontro en el suelo, rodeado de un charco de sangre, y no tardo en descubrir que era incapaz de moverse. Una vez en el hospital, los medicos confirmaron que habia quedado paraplejico. Este libro testimonial que es mucho mas que un libro testimonial esta escrito en forma de despachos de urgencia, o como entradas de un diario dictado durante su estancia en varios hospitales, primero en Roma y despues, ya de vuelta a casa, en Londres.Una escritura fragmentaria, a pedazos, en la que el autor relata su dura realidad diaria, su completa dependencia de los demas, la dificil asimilacion de su nuevo estado, las sesiones de fisioterapia con las que recuperar algo de sensibilidad y movilidad en las extremidades, la relacion con el personal medico, la incipiente amistad con otros pacientes y las tenues esperanzas ante cada pequeño signo de posible mejoria. Kureishi, sin embargo, no se limita a sentar acta de su dia a dia hospitalario, que cuenta sin paños calientes, sino que tambien evoca su infancia, el descubrimiento de la literatura, los primeros trabajos en el mundo del teatro, la fama que le llevo a visitar Hollywood nominado al Oscar por el guion de Mi hermosa lavanderia, sus aventuras sexuales o la amistad con autores como Salman Rushdie.Estas paginas, llenas de jugosas reflexiones sobre el oficio y el sentido de la escritura como acto creativo, se convierten para el en un arma de combate: un modo de asimilar y al mismo tiempo rebelarse contra su situacion. Constituyen un relato testimonial e intimo, pero tambien una nueva muestra de la prosa vivida y visceral de Kureishi, que no rehuye lo carnal y lo escatologico. Un libro sincero, desgarrador, conmovedor. La escritura como salvavidas.

Mamoon Azam es un monstruo sagrado, una vieja gloria literaria que ya ha escrito sus grandes obras y es un autor consagrado, pero cuyas ventas decrecen. Y sin esas ventas se le hace difícil poder mantener la casa en la campiña inglesa que comparte con su actual esposa, Liana, una italiana con caracter y bastantes menos años que el, a la que conocio y enamoro en una libreria. Liana, de acuerdo con el joven y desenfrenado editor de Mamoon y el renuente beneplacito de este, urde un plan para mejorar las finanzas familiares: encargar una biografia que servira para revitalizar su figura en el mercado literario. Pero la vida de este consagrado escritor indio que llego de joven a la metropoli para estudiar y decidio convertirse en un perfecto gentleman britanico no esta exenta de aspectos escabrosos. Antes de Liana ha habido en su vida otras dos mujeres importantes, a las que en ambos casos destruyo: Peggy, su primera esposa, que murio amargada y enferma, y Marion, su amante americana, a la que sometio a practicas sexuales, como poco, heterodoxas cuando no directamente humillantes. Todo ello lo indaga su biografo, el joven Harry Johnson, a traves de cartas, diarios y entrevistas con el propio Mamoon y con personas que lo conocieron, entre ellas Marion. Pero los fantasmas y las tensiones no solo emergen del pasado, porque la novia de Harry, Alice, pasa unos dias con el en casa de Mamoon y el viejo escritor entabla una peculiar relacion con ella. Y mientras tanto Liana sufre ataques de celos, Harry se lia con una criada de la casa y el biografiado le sonsaca al biografo informaciones sobre su voracidad sexual, su madre loca y otros aspectos turbios de su vida. Y asi, entre el viejo escritor y el joven aprendiz se establece un peligroso juego de manipulacion y seduccion en esta novela que habla del deseo, la culpa, la lujuria, los demonios interiores, las relaciones de pareja, las fantasias sexuales y sentimentales, y el poder en ocasiones temible de las palabras.

«Mi nombre es Karim Amir y soy inglés de los pies a la cabeza, casi.» Así empieza El buda de los suburbios, la novela que, hace veinticinco años, inauguró triunfalmente la carrera de uno de los escri

The centrepiece of Hanif Kureishi's brilliant new collection of fiction is a novella that delves into the fascinating concept of personal identity, and the extent to which this is rooted in our physical being. Middle-aged playwright Adam is amazed to be approached by a shadowy organisation and offered the chance to trade in his decrepit body for a much younger model. He takes up the offer for a six-month period, and his consciousness is duly transplanted into the handsome body of his choice. But Adam soon finds that his new flesh brings with it grave and unforeseen dangers...

This is the new novel from Hanif Kureishi: an outrageous, clever and very funny story of sex, lies, art and what defines a life. 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.

Mamoon Azam, écrivain d''origine indienne de renommée mondiale, voit sa notoriété décliner à 70 ans passés. Afin de réactiver l''intérêt pour son ouvre. Harry Johnson se voit confier la mission de ré

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 colourful and warm novel of London life.

Something to Tell You follows the fortunes of a successful psychoanalyst who, as the book opens, is reflecting on his coming-of-age in 1970s suburbia, on his first love (a relationship that continues to haunt him), and on a brutal act of violence from which he can never escape. The book brilliantly captures that decades sense of sexual freedom, and the exhilaration of the drug culture - as well as the violent struggle between the forces of labour and capital. The events of those years provide a vivid backdrop to the drama that develops thirty years later as the characters face an encroaching middle age with the traumas of their youth still unresolved. Something to Tell You speaks directly to our nations concerns and anxieties, and to our need for love. Like The Buddha of Suburbia, it is full-to-bursting with energy as the characters struggle with desire. At times comic, at times painfully tender, the book is a reflection on the nature of relations between men and women, parents and children. With unfailing deftness of touch Kureishi has created a memorable cast of recognisable individuals, all of whom wrestle with their own limits as human beings, haunted by the past until they find it within themselves to forgive.

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With VENUS, Hanif Kureishi turns his piercing gaze onto the pains of old age. Maurice (Peter OToole) and Ian (Leslie Phillips) are veteran stage actors whose slow, inevitable decline is disrupted by the arrival in their lives of Ians niece Jessie (Jodie Whittaker). While Jessies housekeeping skills make for a bone of contention with Ian, Maurice finds himself attracted to her. Kureishi has crafted a disturbing, wry and profoundly moving swansong for his characters. Also included in this volume is an Introduction by Kureishi in which he describes the inspiration he drew from the Japanese master Tanizaki.

Over the past 10 years Hanif Kureishi has charted the gradual widening of the gulf between fundamentalist Islam and Western values. Starting with THE BLACK ALBUM, Kureishi portrayed the ongoing argument between Islam and Western liberal values, between Islamic certainty and Western rational scepticism. By the time he was writing the short sotry, MY SON THE FANATIC, the break was complete - there was no longer any attempt by the fundmentalists to find any common ground with Western culture.The outbreak of the Iraq war and its aftermath, plus the recent bombings in London, have stimulated Kureishi to write further about this great divide between the East and the West, and this volume collects Kureishis writings from the past 10 years which have have dealt with this subject, charting Islams disengangemnt from dialogue with the West.The volume also contains a new piece, written especially for this book, which brings Kureishis analysis of the situation right up to date.

I was beginning to love my thief, a man I barely knew, but whom I had trusted and even liked, and who had taken my savings, amongst many other crimes. A bravura piece of very personal reportage by Hanif Kureishi about the man who stole his life savings.Nearing sixty and needing to plan for his and his childrens future, Hanif Kureishi employed an accountant from a reputable firm. When the accountant recommended investing in a property scheme, Kureishi followed his advice - only to find out that the accountant was a fraudster and his entire life savings had vanished.In this thought-provoking account of his conman, Kureishi uses this theft as a way of exploring some of the contradictions and dilemmas of our lives: the true value of money; the role of deception in art; how you can love and hate simultaneously; why the financial world seems to revolve around deceit; and what we might recover from those who have stolen from us.

Hanif Kureishis literary memoir explores his relationship with his father, a failed writer. Kurieshi is, of course, hugely successful...EsquireThis 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 TimesDeeply involving, highly intelligent and, in what it doesnt say rather than what it does, profoundly sad.Evening StandardI dont think he has done anything as good, in any medium, as this moving and fiercely honest book.Guardian

This collection begins in the early 1980s with The Rainbow Sign, which was written as the Introduction to the screenplay of My Beautiful Laundrette. It allowed Kureishi to expand upon the issues raised by the film : race, class, sexuality - issues that were provoked by his childhood and family situation. In the ensuing decades, he has developed these initial ideas, especially as the issue of Islams relation to the West has become one of the burning issues of the time.Kureishi shows how flexible a form the essay can be - as intellectual as Sontag or Adam Phillips, as informal and casual as Max Beerbohm, as cool and minimalist as Joan Didion, or as provocative as Norman Mailer. As with his fictional work, these essays display Kureishis ability to capture the temper of the times.

Hate skews reality even more than love.In the story of a Pakistani woman who has begun a new life in Paris, an essay about the writing of Kureishis acclaimed film Le Week-End, and an account of Kafkas relationship with his father, readers will find Kureishi also exploring the topics that he continues to make new, and make his own: growing up and growing old; betrayal and loyalty; imagination and repression; marriage and fatherhood. The collection ends with a bravura piece of very personal reportage about the conman who stole Kureishis life savings - a man who provoked both admiration and disgust, obsession and revulsion, love and hate.

One night, when I am old, sick, right out of semen, and dont need things to get any worse, I hear the noises growing louder. I am sure they are making love in Zenabs bedroom which is next to mine.Waldo, a feted filmmaker, is confined by old age and ill health to his London apartment. Frail and frustrated, he is cared for by his lovely younger wife, Zee. But when he suspects that Zee is beginning an affair with Eddie, more than an acquaintance and less than a friend for over thirty years, Waldo is pressed to action: determined to expose the couple, he sets himself first to prove his suspicions correct - and then to enact his revenge.Written with characteristic black humour and with an acute eye for detail, Kureishis eagerly awaited novella will have his readers dazzled once again by a brilliant mind at work.

The protagonist of Hanif Kureishis 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