The Black Album

by Hanif Kureishi

Overview

The second novel from one of the most celebrated voices in British fiction and film, The Black Album 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780684825403
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	10/29/1996
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Hanif Kureishi won the prestigious Whitbread Prize for The Buddha of Suburbia and was twice nominated for Oscars for best original screenplay (My Beautiful Laundrette and Venus, which starred Peter O’Toole). In 2010 Kureishi received the prestigious PEN/Pinter Prize. He lives in London.

Editorial Reviews

Again cleverly mining the chaos and contradictions of multicultural, postmodern England, Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia) follows the turbulent social and spiritual education of an impressionable young Pakistani at an inferior London college, where he struggles with conflicting personal, familial and cultural allegiances. The year is 1989, and the publication of Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses has caused an international controversy. Shahid Hasan has left his bourgeois family in Kent to study in the city. As he falls in with a group of crusading young Muslims whose charismatic leader lives next door, Shahid also becomes deeply involved-both intellectually and sexually-with his liberal, humanistic professor Deedee Osgood, who has assigned him a term paper on the rock icon then known as Prince. Irresolute to the point of spinelessness, Shahid allows his beliefs to vacillate until a violent confrontation erupts. Kureishi insightfully probes issues of faith and individualism against a memorable landscape of urban and academic upheaval. While Shahid's lack of conviction and personal loyalty make him a less than likable protagonist, there is ample fervor in the colorful supporting cast, and the author's wit and considerable narrative talents easily embroil the reader in the novel's unfolding drama. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Kureishi's first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia (LJ 3/15/90), won England's Whitbread Prize; he is also famous for writing the screenplay of the film My Beautiful Laundrette (Faber & Faber, 1986). This, his second novel, is a portrait of Shahid Hasan, a young Pakistani student torn between a love affair with his college professor, DeeDee Osgood, and his political work with Islamics fighting racism. Kureishi portrays a bleak, drug-infested world full of offbeat sexual encounters. But like the student he depicts, he asks many questions: Can anywhere really be home for an immigrant living between two cultures? Should friends share similar values? Does wisdom come from what we know, or what we don't know? But this makes the novel sound too planned, too arranged. Instead, it's a rollicking, cross-cultural look at modern London life: sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll seen through the eyes of a minority not sure of what path to follow. Recommended for most collections.-Doris Lynch, Bloomington P.L., Ind.

Library Journal