Hanif Kureishi
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Hanif Kureishi (born December 5, 1954 in London) is a Pakistani-British playwright, author, and director on topics of race, nationalism, immigration, and sexuality. He is married and has three sons.
His most famous work is My Beautiful Laundrette, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980's London for a film directed by Stephen Frears. It won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.
His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie.
The book Intimacy (1998) created some controversy. The story includes a man leaving his wife and two young sons, for he feels physically and emotionally rejected by his wife. The controversy was not the novel itself, but the fact that Kureishi himself had recently left his wife and two young sons. In 2000/2001 the novel was loosely adapted to a movie Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film, and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox). It was controversial for its unreserved sex scenes. The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.
His drama The Mother was adapted to a movie by Roger Michell, which won a joint First Prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival. It showed a cross-generational relationship with changed roles: a seventy-year-old English lady and grandmother (played by Anne Reid) who seduces the boyfriend (played by Daniel Craig) of her daughter, a thirty-year-old craftswoman. Sex scenes were shown in realistic drawings only, thus avoiding censorship.
His 2006 screenplay Venus has seen Oscar, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, Broadcast Film Critics Association and Golden Globe nominations for Peter O'Toole in the best actor category.
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[edit] Timeline
- 1954 born in London.
- 1976 First play, Soaking the Heat, staged at the Royal Court Theatre Upstairs.
- 1979 The King and Me produced at the Soho Poly.
- 1980 The Mother Country staged in the Riverside Studios' Plays Umbrella season.
- 1981 Wins the George Devine Award for Outskirts, presented at the Warehouse at the Soho Poly; Borderline another play of his' opens at the Royal Court Theatre.
- 1982 Becomes Writer-in-Residence at the Royal Court.
- 1983 Birds of Passage opens at Hampstead Theatre.
- 1984 Adaptation of Mother Courage staged at the Barbican
- 1985 Film My Beautiful Laundrette released starring youn Daniel Day-Lewis and Gordon Warnecke. Kureishi’s first screenplay, director Stephen Frears, My Beautiful Laundrette is nominated for BAFTA Best Screenplay Award. Wins New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.
- 1988 Film Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, written by Kureishi released. The screenplay, together with Kureishi's diary about making the film with director Stephen Frears, has since been published.
- 1990 The Buddha of Suburbia published. Novel wins the Whitbread Award for the best first novel.
- 1991 Release of film London Kills Me, written and directed by Kureishi.
- 1993 Adapts The Buddha of Suburbia for broadcast as 4 part BBC TV Miniseries, soundtrack by David Bowie.
- 1993 Adaptation of Mother Courage produced as a mobile tour in the UK by the National's education department.
- 1995 Second novel The Black Album published. The Faber Book of Pop edited with Jon Savage published.
- 1997 Collection of short stories, Love in a Blue Time, published.
- 1997 Film release of My Son the Fanatic (film), adapted from his My Son the Fanatic (short story) for film. Third novel Intimacy is published.
- 1999 Production of his play Sleep with Me at the Royal National Theatre. Second collection of short stories, Midnight All Day published in the UK in November.
- 2001 The novel Intimacy was loosely adapted to a movie Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau which won the Berlin Film Festival as best film
- 2001 His fourth novel Gabriel's Gift (Faber and Faber publ.) deals with a father son conflict.
- 2001 A book about Hanif Kureishi is published in the Contemporary World Writers' serial, ed. B. J. Moore, Manchester Univ. Press.
- 2003 His novel The Body is published by Faber and Faber and highly praised.
- 2003 The drama The Mother (about a cross-generational relationship) is published, the adapted movie (by Roger Michell) wins a joint first prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival.
- 2004 My Ear at His Heart is an autobiography, dealing with his youth in London, his first attempts of becoming an artist and philosopher, and shows the influences his father had on him as a writer.
- 2004 He writes the play When The Night Begins for the Hampstead Theatre.
- 2006 He writes the screenplay for Venus (film), an Academy Award-nominated film directed by Roger Michell and staring Peter O'Toole, Leslie Phillips, Vanessa Redgrave and Jodie Whittaker.
[edit] Books
- Kureishi, Hanif. 1990. The Buddha of Suburbia. London: Faber and Faber.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 1995. The Black Album. London: Faber and Faber.
- Kureishi, Hanif. My Son the Fanatic (short story). London: Faber and Faber, 1999.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 1999. Midnight All Day. London: Faber and Faber.
- Moore- Gilbert, Bart. 2001. Hanif Kureishi – Contemporary World Writers. Manchester: Manchester Universitiy Press.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 2001. Intimacy. London: Faber and Faber.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 2001. Gabriel's Gift. London: Faber and Faber.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 2002. Collected Screenplays Volume I. London: Faber and Faber.
- Korte Barabara and Claudia Sternberg. 2003.Many Voices – Many Cultures: Multicultural British Short Stories. Stuttgart: Reclam.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 2003. The Body. London: Faber and Faber.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 2003. The Mother. London: Faber and Faber.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 2004. My Ear at His Heart. London: Faber and Faber.
- Kureishi, Hanif. 2005. Word And The Bomb . London: Faber and Faber.
[edit] External links
- http://www.hanifkureishi.com/ His official homepage
- Hanif Kureishi at www.contemporarywriters.com
- Hanif Kureishi at the Internet Movie Database
- Hanif Kureishi biography and credits at the BFI's Screenonline
- Faber and Faber - UK publisher of Hanif Kureishi
- Waraich, Omar. When Bombs Speak Louder Than Words, Interview with Hanif Kureishi. The Daily Star, Beirut -International Herald Tribune Jan 28 2006
- "In Conversation: Hanif Kureishi with Hirsh Sawhney". The Brooklyn Rail, July/Aug 2006
- Audio interview with Hanif Kureishi from open2.net
- About "My Son The Fanatic" Interpretations of and more background information on the short story.
- Jahn, Manfred. “Poems, Plays and Prose: A Guide to Theory of Literary Genres”. http://www.uni-koeln.de/~ame02/ppp.htm.
