My Ear at His Heart
by Hanif Kureishi
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Description
Described in a recent New York Times Magazine profile as a "postcolonial Philip Roth," Hanif Kureishi first captured the attention of audiences and critics in the 1980s with the award-winning novel The Buddha of Suburbia and the films My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. In three decades of acclaimed work, Kureishi has written fiction and films exploring a series of interconnected themes about identity and desire--from Islamic radicalism to kinky sex, and from psychoanalysis show more to the relationships of fathers and sons. After discovering an abandoned manuscript of his father's, hidden for years, Kureishi was compelled to turn his "unflinching perspective" (Time Out) onto his own history. Like Roth, Martin Amis and Geoffrey Wolfe, who also have written books about their fathers, Kureishi wanted to understand and perhaps to reconcile. My Ear at His Heart offers remarkable insight into the birth of a writer, chronicling how Kureishi's own literary calling emerged from the ashes of his father's aspirations. And so begins a journey that takes Kureishi through his father's privileged childhood by the sea in Bombay, through the turbulent birth of Pakistan and to his modest adult life in England--his days spent as a civil servant, his nights writing prose, hopeful of one day receiving literary recognition. "A beguiling and complex tale of fact, fiction and family tensions" (The Guardian), My Ear at His Heart was published to great acclaim in the United Kingdom in 2004 and went on to win the prestigious Prix France Culture Etranger. Now, this profound work from one of the most compelling artists of our time is at last available in a Scribner edition. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
A memoir of the author's father, an analysis of his own adolescence, a search for what shapes a person, trying to define the person he has become, trying to find the person he wants to be - all this can be found in this complex and very interesting book. Thoughts on reading, on the meaning and ways of writing, friendship, family, race ... a book that leaves me feeling I should reread it with a notebook close to hand. ”
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Author Information
90+ Works 8,967 Members
Hanif Kureishi won England's prestigious Whitbread Prize for his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia. His screenplays include Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. His other works include the novels The Black Album and Gabriel's Gift and the short story collection Love in a show more Blue Time. He lives in London. (Publisher Fact Sheets) show less
Awards and Honors
Awards
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2004
- Dedication
- For my mother, and for my sons
- First words
- On a floor in the corner of my study, sticking our from under a pile of other papers, is a shabby old green folder containing a manuscript I believe will tell me a lot about my father and my own past.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I slip dad's manuscript back into its green folder, place it under a pile of papers, and walk away, out of the room.
Classifications
- Genres
- Biography & Memoir, Literature Studies and Criticism, Fiction and Literature
- DDC/MDS
- 828.91409 — Literature & rhetoric English & Old English literatures English miscellaneous writings English miscellaneous writings 1900- English miscellaneous writings 1900-1999 English miscellaneous writings 1945-1999 Individual authors
- LCC
- PR6061 .U68 .Z46 — Language and Literature English English Literature 1961-2000
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 151
- Popularity
- 213,411
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.43)
- Languages
- 6 — Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 11
- ASINs
- 3
