Alison MacLeod from the University of Chichester interviews Hanif Kureishi

Hanif Kureishi CBE (b. 1954) is a novelist, short story writer, playwright, screenwriter, film-maker and, according to The Times (2008), one of ‘The 50 greatest British writers since 1945″. As a short story writer, he explores a heady range of subjects, including race and religion, love and sexuality, and the power of culture and the imagination.

Kureishi was born in Kent to an Indian father and an English mother. As the child of a mixed-race relationship, he grew up with a keen awareness of racism and ‘otherness’. His award-winning novel The Buddha of Suburbia opens with the now famous line, ”My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost.’

Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School (where David Bowie had been a pupil previously). Later he read philosophy at King’s College, London, and in 1982 was appointed Writer in Residence at the Royal Court Theatre. In 1984, he wrote My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay at a time when the young Kureishi was still living in council accommodation in London. He is now the author of over twenty major novels, story and essay collections, plays and screenplays, and his work has been translated into thirty-six languages. For his services to literature, he was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) and was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts des Lettres.

Alison MacLeod is the author of The Wave Theory of Angels (Penguin 2006) and Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction (Penguin 2007). Her next novel is published by Hamish Hamilton (Penguin) in 2011. She is Professor of Contemporary Fiction at the University of Chichester (UK).

Read interview with Hanif Kureishi