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The Black Album
Paperback
Main Details
Description
Set in London in 1989, the year of the fatwah and the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is a thriller with a background of raves, ecstasy, religious ferment and sexual passion. By the author of "The Buddha of Suburbia" and "Sammy and Rosie Get Laid".
Author Biography
Hanif Kureishi was born and brought up in Kent. He read philosophy at King's College, London. In 1981 he won the George Devine Award for his plays Outskirts and Borderline, and in 1982 he 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. His second screenplay Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) was followed by London Kills Me (1991) which he also directed. The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel in 1990 and was made into a four-part drama series by the BBC in 1993. His version of Brecht's Mother Courage has been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. His second novel, The Black Album, was published in 1995. With Jon Savage he edited The Faber Book of Pop (1995). His first collection of short stories, Love in a Blue Time, was published in 1997. His story My Son the Fanatic, from that collection, was adapted for film and released in 1998. Intimacy, his third novel, was published in 1998, and a film of the same title, based on the novel and other stories by the author, was released in 2001 and won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. His play Sleep With Me premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 1999. His second collection of stories, Midnight All Day, was published in 2000. Gabriel's Gift, his fourth novel, was published in 2001. The Body and Seven Stories and Dreaming and Scheming, a collection of essays, were published in 2002. His screenplay The Mother was directed by Roger Michell and released in 2003. In 2004 he published his play When The Night Begins and a memoir, My Ear At His Heart. A second collection of essays, The Word and the Bomb, followed in 2005. His screenplay Venus was directed by Roger Michell in 2006. His novel Something to Tell You was published in 2008. In July 2009 his adaptation of his novel, The Black Album, opened at the National Theatre, prior to a nation-wide tour. In 2010 his Collected Stories were published. He has been awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
ReviewsKirkus Review US:The conflict between assimilation and ethnic pride animates this vigorous picaresque by the Pakistani-born English screenwriter (My Beautiful Laundrette; Sammy and Rosie Get Laid) and author (The Buddha of Suburbia, 1990). Sahid, a "Paki" university student in London, finds his emotional allegiances divided among his wish to study literature, write, and, generally, "follow the rules" - and the various importunings of his career-oriented family (who run a travel agency), his Muslim "brothers" (who demand his participation in increasingly confrontational public protests against British racism), and his married instructor Dee Dee Osgood, who has more wisdom to offer Sahid than analyses of Great Books and the subtexts of rock lyrics. Kureishi's plot stumbles right along, rising to melodramatic heights whenever it focuses on Sahid's literal sibling, Chili; on a straying husband with a taste for available women and contraband cocaine; and on a bad habit of double-crossing intemperate drug suppliers. There's also an arresting sequence in which Sahid's friends orchestrate a demonstration supporting Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwah imposed on Salman Rushdie for The Satanic Verses. The novel's loose construction leads it to a predictably open-ended conclusion, but that seems perfectly appropriate for a coming-of-age tale whose unformed hero can't decide from one moment to the next whether he's to become a dutiful son and brother, a great novelist, or the happily exhausted boytoy of a splendidly voracious woman. Furthermore, Kureishi's ever-so-slightly aslant diction and syntax provide dozens of gratifying little surprises, as do his vivid, off-the-wall metaphors (e.g., "the city was drenched and slimy, like the inside of an aquarium"). An agreeable mess, but then so is the protagonist - an endearingly distracted pursuer of the Ultimate Good who likes just as well the taste and feel of the here and now. (Kirkus Reviews)
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