The Buddha of Suburbia in Reading 1001

Dec 14, 2018 Pip rated it really liked it

Shelves: 1001-books-challenge

This book has been on my TBR for at least twenty years. I remember a friend carting around a copy in the 90's when it was famous for having won the Whitbread Award, and me asking her what she thought and she was not effusive in her praise. Nevertheless, I have carted my copy from Hong Kong to Kandy to Frankfurt to Tauranga and at last I have read this excellent novel. I did not know that Hanif Kureishi was the same person who had won an Oscar for the screenplay of My Beauitful Laundrette, which This book has been on my TBR for at least twenty years. I remember a friend carting around a copy in the 90's when it was famous for having won the Whitbread Award, and me asking her what she thought and she was not effusive in her praise. Nevertheless, I have carted my copy from Hong Kong to Kandy to Frankfurt to Tauranga and at last I have read this excellent novel. I did not know that Hanif Kureishi was the same person who had won an Oscar for the screenplay of My Beauitful Laundrette, which was the very first movie I saw on my first visit to London. He also wrote the screenplay for Sammie and Rosie Got Laid, which was another favourite movie of mine. I am intrigued that I have not come across any of his subsequent novels, which I hope to rectify soon. When he wrote this story noone had written about the experience of growing up bi-racial in England, so as a coming-of-age story it was avant garde. It is as much about the culture of 1980's London, the difference between one suburb and another and between one social class and another as it is about race. The "Buddha" of the title is the protagonist's father, who is actually a non-practising Moslem who capitalises on the intrigue and ignorance of Indian culture in England to set himself up as a guru, forsaking his soul-wrenching job as a civil servant. The first part of the book is called "In the Suburbs" and is set in Bromley and Beckenham, the latter slightly more aspirational. The way Kureishi vividly describes the suburbs of South London as having different, but fluid, personalities, one more up-market than the other, reads as accurate and highly descriptive. My experience of London suburbs began when my daughter bought in a North London suburb which my husband described at the time as either being on the way up or the way down. We London ingenues marvelled at how few people looked as though they had been born in England. Luckily the suburb was on the way up and changed in similar ways to those described by Kureishi. The second part was called "In the City" and I was surprised at how alien and aspirational inner London was to Karim Amir, the young man who narrates his story. In my experience the City of London was just a short tube ride from the Suburbs, but it was a completely different and exciting place for Karim when he got there. The whole book resounds with cultural allusions, both high and low brow, most particularly of the popular music of the era. It begins with the flares and velvet at the end of the hippies and morphs into the alienation of punk rock and ends up on the cusp of Thatcher's England which changed everything. Enoch Powell gets a mention and I marvel at how Trump's anti-immigrant stance is exacerbating the same tensions all over again. Karim's step-brother becomes a successful pop singer by aping David Bowie and adopting a faux Cockney persona to entertain Americans. I note that Bowie wrote the soundtrack for the television series which followed. Another thing to pursue.. ...more

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Mar 09, 2024 Kristel rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001-books, coming-of-age, 1001-challenge, british-author

Reason read: This was my TBR takedown from the 1001 list for March. It is the first book that I have read by this author. He is a British Pakistani author and the story is said to autobiographical. It is the coming of age of a mixed race boy who is growing up in Britain. He is British. His father is Indian and his mother is British.
I think the author did a good job of writing though I could have done without all the sexual explicit details that was included. It reads like a novel, not a lecture ...more

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