Hanif Kureishi was born in Bromley, South London to a Pakistani father and English mother. He earned a philosophy degree at Kings College London and later taught creative writing at Kingston University.
His debut novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, came out 1991, winning the Whitbread Award for the best first novel; it has been translated into over 20 languages and was made into a BBC miniseries in 1993, with a soundtrack by David Bowie. Kureishi’s other novels include Intimacy (1998) which was adapted as an award-winning film in 2001; The Black Album (1995) which was adapted for the theatre and staged at the National Theatre in 2009; and What Happened? (2019). He has also published several short fiction and essay collections and over a dozen plays and screenplays including My Beautiful Laundrette (1996), My Son the Fanatic (1997) and Venus (2007).
On Boxing Day 2022 in Rome, Kureishi suffered a fall that left him paralysed; Shattered, his moving and candid memoir about the experience, came out in 2024.
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