Rating: 
Summary: perfect contemporary british novel
Review: Kureishi has written the perfect contemporary british novel for the contemporary thinker. He probes into such matters as racism and drugs, and seems to question whether either of these are necessary (after having Shahid, his protagonist, exposed to quite a bit of both). His ability to combine his powerful sociopolitical thoughts with a bit of a love story speaks of all of our lives today - we must deal with many different causes, trying to find out which ones are ours.
Rating: 
Summary: The Dark Side of the Moon
Review: One of the greatest contempory writers with a style of his own.The book reveals how painful it is to live in a land not of his own.A must for Indians and Pakistanis who roam around for greener pastures.
Rating:
Summary: It was "okay" but nothing like the "Buddha of Suburbia"
Review: The "Black Album" was "okay" but doesn't qualify for the "5 stars" which I gave "The Buddha of Suburbia". Hanif Kureishi's whimsical, topsy turby story of Shahid, a London-bred Pakistanian student at a London college, seeking some sort of altruistic bonding with his Pakistanian fundamentalists "bretheren", whilst simultaneously seeking a liberating selfish binding passion with his college teacher. Caught between two worlds which are on opposite sides of the pole, Shahid eventually flips the coin and decides to follow the path that "feels" right. Although Kureishi's characters are shallow and flippant, and the storyline is a bit thin, it still is a successful satire and critic of religious zealousness, and attacks the ridiculous blind fervor of fanatics (i.e, the aubergine - that was really hilarious).All in all, the book was enjoyable and I would recommend it to all Hanif Kureishi fans.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating insights
Review: This book is so different from most I read. It is violent, real, well written and provides fascinating insights into the life of a culture we live so close with and normally do not know, our own seen from outside, i.e. the protagonist Shalid's Pakistan part of view, and into that of immigrants around us seen from Shalid's western point of view as he had been growing up here. Rather worth reading!
Rating:
Summary: Nineties British multi-culturalism and confusion
Review: This is another fine book from Hanif Kureishi who seems above
all to be honest in what he writes; sufficiently non-literary
to appeal to a wide audience and yet intelligent and thoughtful
in his depiction of (in this case) the problems of identity
for anyone growing up in urban Britain. Funny, true, alarming,
exhilarating; well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: Nineties British multi-culturalism and confusion
Review: This is another fine book from Hanif Kureishi who seems aboveall to be honest in what he writes; sufficiently non-literaryto appeal to a wide audience and yet intelligent and thoughtful in his depiction of (in this case) the problems of identity for anyone growing up in urban Britain. Funny, true, alarming, exhilarating; well worth reading.
Rating:
Summary: better today than a few years ago
Review: Why does a college loafer of Pakistan origin flirt with fundamental Muslims, who become increasingly more extreme and more violent?
That this topic points more today, in a time of the irrational
condemnation of all Muslim tendencies than at the
publication date is no hint to a prophetic gift Kureishis. He "only" describes the colliding of two worlds in a very pointed way.
A nightlife and drug-exterminating student, long used to the British rock'n'roll lifestyle and thus avoiding in-depth thinking. All meetings are volatile and forgotten tomorrow. What he notices from his
neighbour in his college-dormitory praying room, is just as volatile. The consequences of the actions of the ever-larger growing group of fundamentalists are invisible to him, in such a way that it's still easy and good to live in two parallel universes, without coming to the conclusion that one side could be dangerous to the other.
And Kureishi is so intense in his description of this drifting between the worlds
that the reader is almost trying to look after the people in the road after finishing the Black Album.Kureishi has a qualities to offer in this book that is surely one of his best:
-forgetting to think about the own self can easily have dangerous consequences (maybe someday a skinhead-analyzing
social paedagogue reads the book?)
- it outlines the blueprint of the oh-so concerning and understanding
multiculturalist in the person of the lector, who can be nothing but another volatile relationship for the student.
-a book almost selfreading but worth to be read at least one more time to get all sidestreams and hidden wisdom
-it shows that one can vary only one topic again and again,
without becoming a selfcopy or delivering poor literature.
Sometimes the reader gets the impression that Kureishi only knows one story and three persons. It's just a constant rearranging of the situations and relations which makes a new book. BUT: Nothing else is done by great cooks and is there anybody out there who doesn't like to have a decent meal?
This is great literature! period!
Rating:
Summary: Sex, drugs, rock and roll ..
Review: Yet another winner from Hanif Kureishi as he delves deep into the world of drugs, music and adolescent confusion within the
world of a group of Asian college students. Taking the title from a Prince album, Kureishi explores the interrelations between a
working class Asian student heavily influenced by literature and his revolutionary, English lecturer with whom he begins an affair.This is counterbalanced by the threats of an uprising amongst his fellow students who seek to defend themselves against the prejudice they see within neighbouring communities. In a titanic struggle, Shahid Hasan must choose between his friends and his lover, both of whom are cast in the revolutionary
lights yet in radically different ways. Just as in The Buddha of Suburbia, Kureishi's own literary and musical tastes are revealed
yet this also shows what can go wrong when one person takes it on themselves to embody the opinions of the majority. The
result sees the boundaries of class and identity become tragically blurred amongst a haze of pills, alcohol and teenage outrage. Once again Kureishi reinforces his position as one of the best non-British writers in British literature with a rollercoaster novel which moves between the deadly serious and wickedly funny, true genius.
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