Hanif Kureishi

Writing the Self: a Biography

Inbunden, Engelska, 2023

319 kr

Skickas . Fri frakt för medlemmar vid köp för minst 249 kr.

Original, bold and always funny, Hanif Kureishi is one of Britain’s most popular, provocative and versatile writers.Born in Bromley in 1954 to an Indian father and white British mother, Kureishi’s life is intimately bound up with the history of immigration and social change in Britain. This is the story of how a mixed-raced child of empire who attended the local comprehensive school found success with a remarkable series of novels and screenplays, including My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia, Intimacy, Venus and Le Week-End. The book also illuminates a larger story, not only of the artist as a young man, but of the recasting of Britain in the aftermath of decolonisation.Drawing on journals, letters and manuscripts from Kureishi’s unexplored archive, recently acquired by the British Library, and informed by interviews with his family, friends and collaborators, as well with the writer himself, Ruvani Ranasinha sheds new light on how his life animates his work. This first biography offers a vivid portrait of a major talent who has inspired a new generation of writers.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2023-08-29
Mått156 x 234 x 48 mm
Vikt1 442 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
Antal sidor912
FörlagManchester University Press
ISBN9781526147394

Tillhör följande kategorier

Biografi: författare och journalister inom Biografier
Biografier inom Biografier

Ruvani Ranasinha is Professor of Global Literature at King’s College London. She is the author of Hanif Kureishi: Writers and Their Works (2002) and has written extensively on South-Asian fiction and writers. Born in Sri Lanka, she migrated to Britain with her parents at the age of one. She grew up in Epsom in Surrey, read English Literature at the University of Bristol and received her PhD from the University of Oxford. She lives in west London with her husband, daughter and son.

'This is a magnificent, meticulous and exhaustive biography, and one worthy of its mercurial subject.’ The Spectator 'Ranasinha succeeds in her aim of appearing definitive, while establishing Kureishi’s significance to British cultural life of the past 50 years.' The Times 'Ruvani Ranasinha’s Hanif Kureishi: Writing the self is an illuminating biography; the fact that it is also a portrait of modern Britain is a tribute both to the scope of Kureishi’s work and to the thoroughness of Ranasinha’s research.'The TLS'Ruvani Ranasinha’s biography, which contains hardly a dull page, deserves the adjectives detailed, exhaustive, and magisterial without any such caveats. It is a glorious tome that will take the study of Hanif Kureishi to a new level and is certain to be the book to shape how his works will be studied for years to come (or at least until the diaries are published in full).'Hans-Georg Erney, South Asian Review'Ruvani Ranasinha illuminates the life as well as the work of the beloved writer Hanif Kureishi. This well-researched and exhaustive biography has an aura of completeness.'Amitava Kumar, author of A Time Outside This Time'Ruvani Ranasinha's life of Hanif Kureishi is not just an impressively comprehensive portrait of the artist as a young man, it also provides an engrossing snapshot of his times. With insight and sympathy, Ranasinha captures a rare turning-point in the development of our literary tradition. For all the admirers of Kureishi and his work, this must be essential reading.'Robert McCrum, author of The 100 Best Novels in English 'What a fine and illuminating biography .. .it has been stimulating to read.'Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad