Hanif Kureishi – the famous British author on Prague, Islam and multiracial societies in Europe

Undoubtedly the most famous guest at this year’s Prague Writers’ Festival, the British novelist, screenwriter and playwright Hanif Kureishi rose to international fame in 1985, with his screenplay for the film “My Beautiful Laundrette”. Since then, he published the novel “The Buddha of Suburbia” to great acclaim and continues to write extensively, both for the screen and works of fiction. Ahead of his first reading at the festival, I asked him about his work, why he enjoys the short story form and if he had previously visited Prague.

Hanif Kureishi

“I came to Prague probably about 20 years ago, and it’s a great literary city for me. There are many writers here that I am interested in, like Kafka and Kundera, and I am interested in the history of the city under communism. So I am very happy to be here, to meet people and talk about their lives here.”

And you are a guest of this year’s Prague Writers’ Festival. Could you talk about what panel discussions you will be participating in and what you have prepared?

Photo: Antonio Melina/ABr

“I think I am going to talk about my work tonight, and I am going to read a story that I wrote titled Weddings and Beheadings. And tomorrow, we will talk about a very important subject, which is Islam, and its meaning in the contemporary world. We will talk about writing and its relation to religion. So it is going to be a very exciting festival this time.”

And I believe that the discussion is actually titled “What is the Future of Islam”. Could I get a preliminary answer from you on this very complex question?

“I have no idea what the future of Islam will be, I don’t even know whether it will rain tomorrow or whether it will be sunny. I have no idea. But it is way of talking about race, it is a way of talking about integration, it is a way of talking about religion and it is a way of talking about freedom and writing and the meaning of creativity and the imagination.”

You wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1984, at a time when you were still in your beginnings as a writer. It was nominated for an Oscar. How did you experience the quick success your screenplay had?

“You say it was a quick success, but in fact I had been writing for quite some time, I had been writing for about ten years, I had been working at the Royal Court. So it was a huge success and it changed my life and it enabled me to become a professional writer. And it was very surprised and amazed that this little film that I made with my dear friend, Stephen Frears, became successful, but it enabled me to become a professional writer.”

My Beautiful Laundrette and The Rainbow Sign deals with issues of race and identity, something that critics see as a recurrent theme in your work. To quote from your work, you have written “we are Pakistanis, but you, you will always be a Paki” and you go on to state that you couldn’t lay claim to either Pakistan or England. Has that changed at all? Have you emancipated yourself from a need to belong to any given culture or nation?

“I guess when you belong, you don’t even notice it. I guess I belong in London, I am part of the British literary culture, I write for a living and I don’t feel torn between cultures, I don’t feel I belong anywhere else. London is a great literary city, it is a great place to live and a great place to work.”

In the same piece, you state that it is the white British who have to learn that being British isn’t what it was. That was over 15 years ago. Have they learned?

“I think that there is a big struggle in Britain which is really to do with making a multiracial, multicultural society. And it has been difficult to do. And there are many questions to do with race, to do with religion, to do with identity, to do with immigration and so on. And these questions are alive and people are working with them all the time. And as long as they are not suppressed, as long as they are they are a part of the discussion, which they are, then something is alive, something is changing.”

In 1990, you published your first novel to great acclaim, The Buddha of Suburbia. What makes the suburbs interesting to you as a place for the narrative to unfold?

“I don’t think the suburbs are particularly interesting, it’s just where I came from, and where my parents were and where my youthful experiences to do with music, to do with rock and roll, to do with writing, to do with race, to do with fascism, to do with my childhood, it’s where it all comes from and I guess it’s those subjects that I still write about.”

A lot of themes in that book – multiculturalism, Islam, hybridity – have now become a very popular topic for writers, but this wasn’t the case when you wrote it. Do you welcome the fact that these themes are being discussed intensively nowadays?

Buddha

“I wrote about it because it was my experience, I was writing about my own family, my father, about my own history and trying to find my own place in Britain. But as Europe continues to mutate, to change, I think these issues in France, Italy, Germany, Britain, Spain, are really central to the relation of Europe to the rest of the world. These questions are really central.”

You said on BBC’s Radio 4 that you took a lot of suffering out of the Buddha. So maybe we can talk a bit about how being a young Asian in the era that you grew up in was a difficult thing?

“I guess the suffering had to with boredom, the sense that you might never get out of the suburbs, and the suppression of creativity and the continuous racism of that time, I probably took out. I wanted to write a book that was lively, that was exuberant, that was funny.”

Karachi, photo: V. Malik, Creative Commons 2.0

You have written an abundance of short stories. What attracts you to the short story form?

“The short story is a wonderful form, and you can do it because it is quick. Recently I was in Pakistan and went straight from there to Paris. And I was thinking: ‘Wow, what is the difference between Karachi and Paris?’ and I wrote a story about a woman who lives in Paris and Pakistan, and I wrote it very quickly, and I could say what I wanted to say, and I will publish it soon. So it is the quickness. A novel takes a lot of time, a lot of time, it’s a big thing to do, whereas a story is like a photograph. It’s wonderful.”

In a recent piece you wrote for the New York Times on the topic of dyslexia, you say: “If the Ritalin boy prefers obedience to creativity, he may be sacrificing his best interests in a way that might infuriate him later.” Can you talk a bit about the topic of this essay?

“The piece was really about concentration. We live in a very competitive world and the kids want to get jobs, they want to succeed in the material world and so on. But the sacrifice may be of creativity, of imagination, of your free mind. If you could take a drug that enabled you to concentrate on your homework, if you could take a drug that would enable you to concentrate on whatever your parents wanted you to concentrate on at the time, it may be that you are missing out on things that are much more interesting. So it is really an essay in favor of the libido. The libido knows where it wants to go, and it sees something interesting and exciting and a drug like Ritalin is a sort of policeman.”

You must keep a terribly busy schedule. What are you working on right now?

“I am writing a novel, I am writing some short fiction, I am writing a movie, I am writing some essays, and I teach, so I am busy.”

So what do you do to unwind?

“I guess I hang out with my kids. I have three teenage children, so I spend a lot of time with them. And we basically are very interested in soccer, and how our team Manchester United are doing.”

Hanif Kureishi will be participating in a panel discussion on the future of Islam on Tuesday, April 17, at 6 p.m. at Prague's National Theater's Nová scéna. More information can be found at pwf.cz, the website of the Prague Writers' Festival.