Hanif Kureishi @ EIBF

Article by Keir Hind | 27 Aug 2010

 

Hanif Kureishi appeared in the largest tent, the RBS Tent, and drew a large crowd for this event, promoting his new volume of collected short stories. The volume collects stories written over the course of his career, and as such this session was given over to reflections on the author’s career. Actually, much of it was about his boyhood and teenage years, growing up in Bromley in Kent, where his father encouraged him to read, and a little later, when he worked at the Royal Court Theatre, which he found a welcome respite from being called a ‘Paki’ constantly, in late sixties/early seventies Britain, and where he could find himself next to all sorts of interesting people, like going to the pub with Samuel Beckett ‘which he liked to do’. Kureishi also said that, from his perspective, Britain has become a much nicer place, as the level of casual racism has decreased dramatically since then, though later in the Q&A he had to clarify that it hasn’t, obviously been completely eradicated. The author also gave a reading of one of his stories, The Widow, a highly amusing reading that benefitted greatly from Kureishi’s delivery, which drew out the humour in the story superbly. [Keir Hind]

 

Hanif Kureishi appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on 24 Aug