Hanif Kureishi offers an insight into the birth of a writer - himself -
through this memoir that conjures up a family story of how he found his own
literary calling from the ashes of his father's failed attempts in the past
even as the world turned upside down and India split in two along religious
lines.Hanif Kureishi offers a remarkable insight into the birth of a writer -
himself - through this memoir that conjures up a family story of how he found
his own literary calling from the ashes of his father's failed attempts in the
past. The wellspring of the memoir is Kureishi's discovery of an abandoned
manuscript that recounts his father's childhood in Bombay as the world turns
upside down and India splits in two along religious lines: thus a family that
had lived in India for generations now had to accept a Pakistani identity. And
so begins a journey which takes Kureishi through his father's privileged
childhood by the sea in Bombay to his adult life hidden away in the suburbs of
Bromley - his days spent as a minor functionary in the Pakistan embassy in
London, his nights writing prose, hopeful of one day receiving literary
recognition...
