The Black Album with My Son the Fanatic

Book excerpt: Now available together for the first time, two of the best works—a novel and a short story—from Ooscar-nominated screenwriter Hanif Kureishi, one of the most original, celebrated, and prophetic voices in British fiction and film. First capturing the attention of audiences and critics in the 1980s with award-winning works such as The Buddha of Suburbia, and My Beautiful Laundrette, and recently described by The New York Times Magazine as “a kind of postcolonial Philip Roth,” Hanif Kureishi remains one of the most compelling artists of our time. These stunningly prescient earlier works of Kureishi’s are more timely and relevant than ever, and they’re now reissued in one volume. The Black Album, Kureishi’s second novel, is an exhilarating multicultural coming-of-age tale featuring Shalid, a sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll-loving Pakistani student torn between a love affair with a gorgeous free-spirited college professor and his desire to please his conservative Muslim community. In the story “My Son the Fanatic,” which is also an award-winning film, Kureishi reveals the shifting values between a father and son—two generations of immigrants struggling between assimilation and separatist fundamentalism. Praised as an author who “fully entertains while addressing wickedly complex social issues” (San Francisco Chronicle), Kureishi infuses these deft and vivid stories with his love of non-conformity and his understanding of the ties that bind us to family and culture.