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| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Buddha of Suburbia Hanif Kureishi, 1991-05-01 “A wickedly funny novel” (The New York Times) from the author of SHATTERED “There was one copy going round our school like contraband. I read it in one sitting...I'd never read a book about anyone remotely like me before.”—Zadie Smith My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost... The hero of Hanif Kureishi's debut novel is dreamy teenager Karim, desperate to escape suburban South London and experience the forbidden fruits which the 1970s seem to offer. When the unlikely opportunity of a life in the theatre announces itself, Karim starts to win the sort of attention he has been craving—albeit with some rude and raucous results. With the publication of The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi landed into the literary landscape as a distinct new voice and a fearless taboo-breaking writer. The novel inspired a ground-breaking BBC series featuring a soundtrack by David Bowie. Winner of the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia Nahem Yousaf, 2002-06-26 This is an excellent guide to Hanif Kureishi's ground-breaking novel. It features a biography of the author (including an in-depth interview with Kureishi), a full-length analysis of the novel, and a great deal more. If you're studying this novel, reading it for your book club, or if you simply want to know more about it, you'll find this guide informative and helpful. This is part of a new series of guides to contemporary novels. The aim of the series is to give readers accessible and informative introductions to some of the most popular, most acclaimed and most influential novels of recent years - from ‘The Remains of the Day' to ‘White Teeth'. A team of contemporary fiction scholars from both sides of the Atlantic has been assembled to provide a thorough and readable analysis of each of the novels in question. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Last Word Hanif Kureishi, 2015-03-10 Originally published: Great Britain: Faber and Faber, 2014. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Something to Tell You Hanif Kureishi, 2009-01-08 Jamal Khan, a psychoanalyst in his fifties living in London, is haunted by memories of his teens: his first love, Ajita; the exhilaration of sex, drugs and politics; and a brutal act of violence which changed his life for ever. As he and his best friend Henry attempt to make the sometimes painful, sometimes comic transition to their divorced middle age, balancing the conflicts of desire and dignity, Jamal's teenage traumas make a shocking reappearance in his present life. 'A great comic writer and a peerless connoisseur of the human mystery.' Independent 'A novel that describes with such elegant seriousness the fear of ageing, the inanition of pleasure, the survival of love, the longing to understand and be understood.' Sunday Telegraph 'A vital, teeming, panoramic, immersive novel.' Time Out 'There is more that is worth thinking about in Something to Tell You than in the work of almost any other current British novelist.' Evening Standard |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: My Son the Fanatic Hanif Kureishi, 2008 |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Cockroach Rawi Hage, 2008-09-01 Cockroach is as urgent, unsettling, and brilliant as Rawi Hage's bestselling and critically acclaimed first book, De Niro's Game. The novel takes place during one month of a bitterly cold winter in Montreal's restless immigrant community, where a self-described thief has just tried but failed to commit suicide. Rescued against his will, the narrator is obliged to attend sessions with a well-intentioned but naive therapist. This sets the story in motion, leading us back to the narrator's violent childhood in a war-torn country, forward into his current life in the smoky emigre cafes where everyone has a tale, and out into the frozen night-time streets of Montreal, where the thief survives on the edge, imagining himself to be a cockroach invading the lives of the privileged, but wilfully blind, citizens who surround him. In 2008, Cockroach was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Literary Award, and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. It won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, presented by the Quebec Writers' Federation. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Contemporary British Fiction Nick Bentley, 2008-08-27 This critical guide introduces major novelists and themes in British fiction from 1975 to 2005. It engages with concepts such as postmodernism, feminism, gender and the postcolonial, and examines the place of fiction within broader debates in contemporary culture.A comprehensive Introduction provides a historical context for the study of contemporary British fiction by detailing significant social, political and cultural events. This is followed by five chapters organised around the core themes: (1) Narrative Forms, (2) Contemporary Ethnicities, (3) Gender and Sexuality, (4) History, Memory and Writing, and (5) Narratives of Cultural Space. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Joe College Tom Perrotta, 2001-10-05 For Danny, a Yale junior and the sympathetic everyman hero of this novel, now in paperback, Spring Break means two weeks behind the wheel of the Roach Coach, his father's lunch truck. Danny uses the time to make sense of his love life, which gets pretty complicated. A New York Times Notable Book of the Year. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: My Ear at His Heart Hanif Kureishi, 2014-10-09 'Hanif Kureishi's literary memoir explores his relationship with his father, a failed writer. Kurieshi is, of course, hugely successful...' Esquire 'This is an ambitious book. Kureshi - free-associating with what feels like unmitigated honesty - successfully conveys the impression that in this book he has actually given us himself.' Sunday Times 'Deeply involving, highly intelligent and, in what it doesn't say rather than what it does, profoundly sad.' Evening Standard 'I don't think he has done anything as good, in any medium, as this moving and fiercely honest book.' Guardian |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Fruit of the Lemon Andrea Levy, 2007-01-23 From the award-winning author of Small Island, “a bittersweet exploration of an outsider’s experience of British culture” (Bookmarks). Faith Jackson knows little about her parents’ lives before they moved to England. Happy to be starting her first job in the costume department at BBC television, and to be sharing a house with friends, Faith is full of hope and expectation. But when her parents announce that they are moving “home” to Jamaica, Faith’s fragile sense of her identity is threatened. Angry and perplexed as to why her parents would move to a country they so rarely mention, Faith becomes increasingly aware of the covert and public racism of her daily life, at home and at work. At her parents’ suggestion, in the hope it will help her to understand where she comes from, Faith goes to Jamaica for the first time. There she meets her Aunt Coral, whose storytelling provides Faith with ancestors, whose lives reach from Cuba and Panama to Harlem and Scotland. Branch by branch, story by story, Faith scales the family tree, and discovers her own vibrant heritage, which is far richer and wilder than she could have imagined. “Levy has chosen her title shrewdly: like the lemon, her loaded satire is bright and alluring, but its bite is sharp.” —Booklist “Levy’s raw sense of realism and depth of feeling infuses every line.” —Elle “Bright and inventive . . . Levy’s command of voices, whether English or Jamaican, is fine, fresh and funny.” —The Observer |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Hanif Kureishi Kenneth C. Kaleta, 2010-01-01 Hanif Kureishi is a proper Englishman. Almost. So observes biographer Kenneth Kaleta. Well known for his films My Beautiful Laundrette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, the Anglo-Asian screenwriter, essayist, and novelist has become one of the leading portrayers of Britain's multicultural society. His work raises important questions of personal and national identity as it probes the experience of growing up in one culture with roots in another, very different one. This book is the first critical biography of Hanif Kureishi. Kenneth Kaleta interviewed Kureishi over several years and enjoyed unlimited access to all of his working papers, journals, and personal files. From this rich cache of material, he opens a fascinating window onto Kureishi's creative process, tracing such works as My Beautiful Laundrette, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid, The Buddha of Suburbia, London Kills Me, The Black Album, and Love in a Blue Time from their genesis to their public reception. Writing for Kureishi fans as well as film and cultural studies scholars, Kaleta pieces together a vivid mosaic of the postcolonial, hybrid British culture that has nourished Kureishi and his work. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Imagining London John Clement Ball, 2004-01-01 Imagining London examines representations of the English metropolis in Canadian, West Indian, South Asian, and second-generation 'black British' novels written in the last half of the twentieth century. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Love in a Blue Time Hanif Kureishi, 2016-08-08 Love in a Blue Time is a brilliant collection of stories by the bestselling author of The Buddha of Suburbia. This time, Hanif Kureishi's subject is the difficult, serious business of love - and hate. His stories have all the qualities of his novels: they are funny, inventive, bawdy, and aggressively contemporary. The characters that stride out of the pages of Love in a Blue Time, however damaged, deranged or despicable, are united by one thing: they are all creatures of strong desire. 'In this haunting, troubling collection of short stories, Hanif Kureishi has finally embraced the decadence that has lain in wait for him . . . A tense, desolate and consuming collection.' Observer 'The whole collection buzzes with anger and angst.' Time Out |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: My Beautiful Laundrette Hanif Kureishi, 2014-10-30 Omar is a restless young Asian man, caring for his alcoholic father in the hustling London of the mid-1980s. His uncle, a keen Thatcherite, offers Omar an entrepreneurial opportunity to revamp a dingy laundrette, and ambitious Omar rolls up his sleeves, enlisting the assistance of his old school-friend Johnny, who has since fallen in with a gang of neo-fascists. Omar and Johnny soon form an unlikely alliance that leads to business success, as well as other, more intimate surprises. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Enchantress of Florence Salman Rushdie, 2009-02-24 A tall, yellow-haired young European traveller calling himself “Mogor dell’Amore,” the Mughal of Love, arrives at the court of the real Grand Mughal, the Emperor Akbar, with a tale to tell that begins to obsess the whole imperial capital. The stranger claims to be the child of a lost Mughal princess, the youngest sister of Akbar’s grandfather Babar: Qara Köz, ‘Lady Black Eyes’, a great beauty believed to possess powers of enchantment and sorcery, who is taken captive first by an Uzbeg warlord, then by the Shah of Persia, and finally becomes the lover of a certain Argalia, a Florentine soldier of fortune, commander of the armies of the Ottoman Sultan. When Argalia returns home with his Mughal mistress the city is mesmerised by her presence, and much trouble ensues. The Enchantress of Florence is a love story and a mystery – the story of a woman attempting to command her own destiny in a man’s world. It brings together two cities that barely know each other – the hedonistic Mughal capital, in which the brilliant emperor wrestles daily with questions of belief, desire and the treachery of sons, and the equally sensual Florentine world of powerful courtesans, humanist philosophy and inhuman torture, where Argalia’s boyhood friend ‘il Machia’ – Niccolò Machiavelli – is learning, the hard way, about the true brutality of power. These two worlds, so far apart, turn out to be uncannily alike, and the enchantments of women hold sway over them both. But is Mogor’s story true? And if so, then what happened to the lost princess? And if he’s a liar, must he die? |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: White Teeth Zadie Smith, 2003-05-20 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • Updated for the 25th Anniversary with a new introduction by the author • The blockbuster debut novel from “a preternaturally gifted” writer (The New York Times) and author of On Beauty and Swing Time—set against London's racial and cultural tapestry, reveling in the ecstatic hodgepodge of modern life, flirting with disaster, and embracing the comedy of daily existence. One of the New York Times’s 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Zadie Smith’s dazzling debut caught critics grasping for comparisons and deciding on everyone from Charles Dickens to Salman Rushdie to John Irving and Martin Amis. But the truth is that Zadie Smith’s voice is remarkably, fluently, and altogether wonderfully her own. At the center of this invigorating novel are two unlikely friends, Archie Jones and Samad Iqbal. Hapless veterans of World War II, Archie and Samad and their families become agents of England’s irrevocable transformation. A second marriage to Clara Bowden, a beautiful, albeit tooth-challenged, Jamaican half his age, quite literally gives Archie a second lease on life, and produces Irie, a knowing child whose personality doesn’t quite match her name (Jamaican for “no problem”). Samad’s late-in-life arranged marriage (he had to wait for his bride to be born), produces twin sons whose separate paths confound Iqbal’s every effort to direct them, and a renewed, if selective, submission to his Islamic faith. “[White Teeth] is, like the London it portrays, a restless hybrid of voices, tones, and textures…with a raucous energy and confidence.” —The New York Times Book Review |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Black Album Hanif Kureishi, 2000 Shahid, a clean-cut young man from the provinces, comes to London after the death of his father. In the capital he falls in love with Deedee Osgood, a college lecturer, and finds himself passionately embroiled in a spiritual battle between liberalism and fundamentalism. The Black Album is set in the London of 1989, the year after the second summer of love and the year of the infamous fatwah was imposed on Salman Rushdie. It is a thriller for the rave generation by one of the most praised and influential writers of the times. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: I Am Not Sidney Poitier Percival Everett, 2011-08-02 I Am Not Sidney Poitier is an irresistible comic novel from the master storyteller Percival Everett, and an irreverent take on race, class, and identity in America I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk-taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in the world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales. I was Not Sidney Poitier. Not Sidney Poitier is an amiable young man in an absurd country. The sudden death of his mother orphans him at age eleven, leaving him with an unfortunate name, an uncanny resemblance to the famous actor, and, perhaps more fortunate, a staggering number of shares in the Turner Broadcasting Corporation. Percival Everett's hilarious new novel follows Not Sidney's tumultuous life, as the social hierarchy scrambles to balance his skin color with his fabulous wealth. Maturing under the less-than watchful eye of his adopted foster father, Ted Turner, Not gets arrested in rural Georgia for driving while black, sparks a dinnertable explosion at the home of his manipulative girlfriend, and sleuths a murder case in Smut Eye, Alabama, all while navigating the recurrent communication problem: What's your name? a kid would ask. Not Sidney, I would say. Okay, then what is it? |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: One Day David Nicholls, 2010-06-15 NOW A NETFLIX SERIES • NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • TWO PEOPLE. ONE DAY. TWENTY YEARS. • What starts as a fleeting connection between two strangers soon becomes a deep bond that spans decades. • [An] instant classic. . . . One of the most ...emotionally riveting love stories you’ll ever encounter. —People It’s 1988 and Dexter Mayhew and Emma Morley have only just met. But after only one day together, they cannot stop thinking about one another. Over twenty years, snapshots of that relationship are revealed on the same day—July 15th—of each year. They face squabbles and fights, hopes and missed opportunities, laughter and tears. Dex and Em must come to grips with the nature of love and life itself. As the years go by, the true meaning of this one crucial day is revealed. [A] surprisingly deep romance...so thoroughly satisfying. —Entertainment Weekly |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Myal Erna Brodber, 2014-08-08 Jamaican-born novelist and sociologist Erna Brodber describes Myal as “an exploration of the links between the way of life forged by the people of two points of the black diaspora—the Afro-Americans and the Afro-Jamaicans.” Operating on many literary levels—thematically, linguistically, stylistically—it is the story of women’s cultural and spiritual struggle in colonial Jamaica. The novel opens at the beginning of the 20th century with a community gathering to heal the mysterious illness of a young woman, Ella, who has returned to Jamaica after an unsuccessful marriage abroad. The Afro-Jamaican religion myal, which asserts that good has the power to conquer all, is invoked to heal Ella, who has been left zombified” and devoid of any black soul. Ella, who is light skinned enough to pass for white, has suffered a breakdown after her white American husband produced a black-face minstrel show based on the stories of her village and childhood. This cultural appropriation is one of a series Ella encountered in her life, and parallels the ongoing theft of the labor and culture of colonized peoples for imperial gain and pleasure. The novel‘s rich, vivid language and vital characters earned it the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Canada and the Caribbean. The novel links nicely with Brodber’s coming-of-age story, Jane & Louisa Will Soon Come Home, also from Waveland Press, for its similar images, themes, and specific Jamaican cultural references to colonialism, religion, slavery, gender, and identity. Both novels are Brodber’s way of telling stories outside of published history to point out the whitewashing and distortion of black history through religion and colonialism. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: My Name Is Why Lemn Sissay, 2019-08-29 THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER INDIE BOOK AWARDS NON-FICTION WINNER 'EXTRAORDINARY' The Times, 'BEAUTIFUL' Dolly Alderton, 'SHATTERING' Observer, 'INCREDIBLE' Benjamin Zephaniah, 'UNPUTDOWNABLE' Sunday Times, 'ASTOUNDING' Matt Haig 'POWERFUL' Elif Shafak At the age of seventeen, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learned that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he learned that his mother had been pleading for his safe return to her since his birth. This is Lemn's story: a story of neglect and determination, misfortune and hope, cruelty and triumph. Sissay reflects on his childhood, self-expression and Britishness, and in doing so explores the institutional care system, race, family and the meaning of home. Written with all the lyricism and power you would expect from one of the nation's best-loved poets, this moving, frank and timely memoir is the result of a life spent asking questions, and a celebration of the redemptive power of creativity. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Multiculturalism and Magic Realism in Zadie Smith’s novel White Teeth: Between Fiction and Reality Sylvia Hadjetian, 2014-03-01 Since the 1970s, there has been increasing concern with the impact of (post)colonialism on British identities and culture. White Teeth by Zadie Smith is the story of three families from three different cultural backgrounds, set mostly in multicultural London. The first part of this book provides an overview of the former British Empire, the Commonwealth and the history of Bangladesh, Jamaica and the Jews in England as relevant to White Teeth. Following this, the role of the (former) centre of London will be presented. Subsequently, definitions and postcolonial theories (Bhabha, Said etc.) shall be discussed.The focus of this book is on life in multicultural London. The main aspects analysed in these chapters deal with identity, the location where the novel is set and racism. A further aim of the book is a comparison between the fictional world of White Teeth and reality. One chapter is devoted to the question of magic realism and the novel's position between two worlds.In a summary, the writer hopes to convince the readers of the fascination felt when reading the novel and when plunging into the buzzing streets of contemporary multicultural London. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Kartography Kamila Shamsie, 2011-06-06 _______________ 'A boisterous tribute to her home town that crackles with the chaos of Pakistani political life' - The Times 'Deftly woven and provocative ... Shamsie's blistering humour and ear for dialogue scorches through their whirl of whisky and witticisms' - Observer 'You will notice very quickly that you're reading a book by someone who can write ... Above all, Kartography is a love story. And if you're not sniffling by, or in fact on, page 113, you're reading the wrong book' - Guardian _______________ BY THE ACCLAIMED WINNER OF THE WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION 2018 SHORTLISTED FOR THE JOHN LLEWELLYN RHYS PRIZE _______________ Soul mates from birth, Karim and Raheen finish one another's sentences, speak in anagrams and lie spine to spine. They are irrevocably bound to one another and to Karachi, Pakistan. It beats in their hearts - violent, polluted, corrupt, vibrant, brave and ultimately, home. As the years go by they let a barrier of silence build between them until, finally, they are brought together during a dry summer of strikes and ethnic violence and their relationship is poised between strained friendship and fated love. _______________ 'Perceptive, funny and poignant' - Times Literary Supplement 'A touching love story, with the city of Karachi beating at its heart' - Daily Mail 'A gorgeous novel of perimeters and boundaries, of the regions – literal and figurative – in which we're comfortable moving about and those through which we'd rather not travel' - Los Angeles Times |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Privilege of Crisis Elahe Haschemi Yekani, 2011-03-07 Despite the understanding of scholars that masculinity, far from being a natural or stable concept, is in reality a social construction, the culture at large continues to privilege an idealized, coherent male point of view. The Privilege of Crisis draws on the work of authors such as H. Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad--as well as contemporary postcolonial writers such as J. M. Coetzee, Hanif Kureishi and Zadie Smith--to show how recurrent references to a crisis of masculinity or the decline of masculinity serve largely to demonstrate and support positions of male privilege. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Beyond Babylon Igiaba Scego, 2019 Describes Argentina's horrific dirty war, the chaotic final years of brutal dictatorship in Somalia, and the modern-day excesses of Italy's right-wing politics through the words of two half-sisters, their mothers, and the elusive father who ties their stories together-- |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: They Kay Dick, 2022-02 A dark, dystopian portrait of artists struggling to resist violent suppression—“queer, English, a masterpiece.” (Hilton Als) Set amid the rolling hills and the sandy shingle beaches of coastal Sussex, this disquieting novel depicts an England in which bland conformity is the terrifying order of the day. Violent gangs roam the country destroying art and culture and brutalizing those who resist the purge. As the menacing “They” creep ever closer, a loosely connected band of dissidents attempt to evade the chilling mobs, but it’s only a matter of time until their luck runs out. Winner of the 1977 South-East Arts Literature Prize, Kay Dick’s They is an uncanny and prescient vision of a world hostile to beauty, emotion, and the individual. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: English Fiction Since 1984 Brian Finney, 2006-11-28 This book focuses on the work of a group of British novelists who have broken in different ways from the realist British novel of the post Second World War period without losing their broad appeal among readers. Authors discussed include Salman Rushdie, A.S. Byatt, Ian McEwan, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson and Kazuo Ishiguro. All of these writers have been compelled to seek out new narrative strategies to give appropriate expression to their different responses to a world dominated by global capital and by the media and electronic systems of communication serving its ends. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Narratives for a New Belonging Roger Bromley, 2000 Cultural fictions - texts written from the perspective of the edge - are the focus of this exciting and enlightening book. The author examines the formations of narratives of identity in contemporary 'borderline' fictions and films. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Night of a Thousand Blossoms Frank Gaspar, 2004 In his fourth collection, Gaspar's unique narrative idiom--lush, songful, insistent--firmly establishes him as a distinct, important voice. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Mr. Loverman Bernardine Evaristo, 2025-04-15 From the Booker Prize-winning author of Girl, Woman, Other, which has sold over 250,000 copies in Grove’s editions, a groundbreaking, hilarious novel set in London following two older gay Caribbean men reckoning with being closeted in a rapidly changing world “Bernardine Evaristo can take any story from any time and turn it into something vibrating with life.”—Ali Smith One of Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo’s most highly celebrated novels, Mr. Loverman follows a man named Barrington Jedidiah Walker, who is seventy-four and leads a double life. Born and bred in Antigua, he has lived in Hackney, London, for years. Flamboyant and wise-cracking, with dapper taste in retro suits and a fondness for Shakespeare, Barrington is a husband, father, grandfather―and also secretly gay, lovers with his childhood friend, Morris. Barry’s deeply religious and disappointed wife, Carmel, thinks he sleeps with other women rather than men. When their marriage goes into meltdown, Barry wants to divorce Carmel and live with Morris, but after a lifetime of fear and deception, will he manage to break away? With the wit and humanity that characterized Girl, Woman, Other, Mr. Loverman explodes cultural myths and shows the extent of what can happen when people fear the consequences of being true to themselves. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Midnight All Day Hanif Kureishi, 2000 The stories in Midnight All Day show a contemporary master at the top of his form, acclaimed by one reviewer for his depiction of 'a lost generation of men: those shaped by the sixties, disoriented by the eighties and bereft of a personal and political map in the nineties'.We are unerring in our choice of lovers, particularly when we require the wrong person. There is an instinct, magnet or aerial which seeks the unsuitable. The wrong person is, of course, right for something - to punish, bully, or humiliate us, let us down, leave us for dead, or, worst of all, give us the impression that they are not inappropriate, but almost right, thus hanging us in love's limbo. Not just anyone can do this.In this astonishing collection of stories, Hanif Kureishi confirms his reputation as Britain's foremost chronicler of the loveless, the lost and the dispossessed. The characters in Midnight All Day are familiar to all of us: frustrated and intoxicated, melancholic and sensitive, yet capable of great cruelty, and, if necessary, willing to break the constraints of an old life to make way for the new. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Reading My Father Alexandra Styron, 2011-04-19 PART MEMOIR AND PART ELEGY, READING MY FATHER IS THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER COMING TO KNOW HER FATHER AT LAST— A GIANT AMONG TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN NOVELISTS AND A MAN WHOSE DEVASTATING DEPRESSION DARKENED THE FAMILY LANDSCAPE. In Reading My Father, William Styron’s youngest child explores the life of a fascinating and difficult man whose own memoir, Darkness Visible, so searingly chronicled his battle with major depression. Alexandra Styron’s parents—the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. A drinker, a carouser, and above all “a high priest at the altar of fiction,” Styron helped define the concept of The Big Male Writer that gave so much of twentieth-century American fiction a muscular, glamorous aura. In constant pursuit of The Great Novel, he and his work were the dominant force in his family’s life, his turbulent moods the weather in their ecosystem. From Styron’s Tidewater, Virginia, youth and precocious literary debut to the triumphs of his best-known books and on through his spiral into depression, Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life, offering a ringside seat on a great literary generation’s friendships and their dramas. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written, with humor, compassion, and grace. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe Benjamin Alire Sáenz, 2012 Fifteen-year-old Ari Mendoza is an angry loner with a brother in prison, but when he meets Dante and they become friends, Ari starts to ask questions about himself, his parents, and his family that he has never asked before. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Habibi Craig Thompson, 2011-09-20 From the internationally acclaimed author of Blankets comes a love story of astounding resonance: a parable about our relationship to the natural world, the cultural divide between the first and third worlds, the common heritage of Christianity and Islam, and, most potently, the magic of storytelling. Sprawling across an epic landscape of deserts, harems, and modern industrial clutter, Habibi tells the tale of Dodola and Zam, refugee child slaves bound to each other by chance, by circumstance, and by the love that grows between them. We follow them as their lives unfold together and apart; as they struggle to make a place for themselves in a world (not unlike our own) fueled by fear, lust, and greed; and as they discover the extraordinary depth—and frailty—of their connection. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Good Immigrant Nikesh Shukla, 2016-09-22 First published in 2016, The Good Immigrant has since been hailed as a modern classic and credited with reshaping the discussion about race in contemporary Britain. It brings together a stellar cast of the country’s most exciting voices to reflect on why immigrants come to the UK, why they stay and what it means to be ‘other’ in a place that doesn’t seem to want you, doesn’t truly accept you – however many generations you’ve been here – but still needs you for its diversity monitoring forms. This 5th anniversary edition, featuring a new preface by editor Nikesh Shukla, shows that the pieces collected here are as poignant, challenging, angry, humorous, heartbreaking and important as ever. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Black Album Hanif Kureishi, 1996-10-29 A young man is caught between sexual fever and religious ferver in this hilarious, provocative novel by the acclaimed author of The Buddha of Suburbia. Hanif Kureishi's book . . . crackles with identity politics, conflict, an d humor. . . . Kureishi handles it all with grace, wit, and generosity.--Dan Levy, San Francisco Chronicle Book Review. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: London Triptych Jonathan Kemp, 2011-05-16 Three men, three lives and three eras sinuously entwine in a dark, startling and unsettling narrative of sex, exploitation and dependence set against London's strangely constant gay underworld.Jack Rose begins his apprenticeship as a rent boy with Alfred Taylor in the 1890s, and finds a life of pleasure and excess leads him to new friendships -- most notably with the soon-to-be infamous Oscar Wilde. A century later, David tells his own tale of unashamed decadence while waiting to be released from prison, addressing his story to the lover who betrayed him. Where their paths cross, in the politically sensitive 1950s, the artist Colin Read tentatively explores his sexuality as he draws in preparation for his most ambitious painting yet -- 'London Triptych'.Rent boys, aristocrats, artists and felons populate this bold debut as Jonathan Kemp skilfully interweaves the lives and loves of three very different men across the decades. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Lonely Londoners Sam Selvon, 2024-04-11 London will do for you for now... And I will do for London. London, 1956. Newly arrived from Trinidad, Henry 'Sir Galahad' Oliver is impatient to start his new life. Carrying just pyjamas and a toothbrush, he bursts through Moses Aloetta's door only to find Moses and his friends already deflated by city life. Will the London fog dampen Galahad's dreams? Or will these Lonely Londoners make a home in a city that sees them as a threat? In the first stage adaptation of Sam Selvon's iconic novel about the Windrush Generation, Roy Williams sweeps us back in time to shine a new light on London, friendship, and what we call home. This edition of The Lonely Londoners is published to coincide with the world premiere at London's Jermyn Street Theatre in February 2024. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: Cows Can't Jump Phil Bowne, 2020-11-24 Billy's desperate to escape middle England. He's working the ultimate dead-end job as a grave-digger, his grandad's engaged to a West Indian woman half his age, his xenophobic dad's obsessed with boxing; and his mum's certainly having an affair. Celebrities keep dying and Britain awaits the EU referendum. Meeting Eva, though, changes everything. |
| the buddha of suburbia themes: The Bearded Chameleon Chris Mooney-Singh, 2011 Mooney-Singh speaks from his perspective as a Westerner who now sports a beard, turban and Indian dress, and by doing so merges with the landscape of Indian society. He witnesses an ancient world turning modern as a resident, not merely as a traveller or tourist.--Back cover. |
The Buddha - Wikipedia
While the term Buddha is used in the Agamas and the Pali Canon, the oldest surviving written records of the term Buddha is from the middle of the 3rd century BCE, when several Edicts of …
Buddha | Biography, Teachings, Influence, & Facts | Britannica
4 days ago · Buddha, the enlightened teacher and spiritual leader, revolutionized religious thought with his teachings on compassion, mindfulness, and achieving liberation from suffering.
Buddha - Quotes, Teachings & Facts - Biography
Apr 2, 2014 · Who Was Buddha? Buddha, born with the name Siddhartha Gautama, was a teacher, philosopher and spiritual leader who is considered the founder of Buddhism.
Introduction to Basic Beliefs and Tenets of Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in the fifth century B.C. in what is now Nepal and northern India. He came to be called "the Buddha," …
Buddhism - Definition, Founder & Origins - HISTORY
Oct 12, 2017 · Buddhism is a faith that was founded by Siddhartha Gautama—also known as “the Buddha”—more than 2,500 years ago in India.
Who was Buddha? A short life story of Buddha Shakyamuni
The life story of the Buddha begins in Lumbini, near the border of Nepal and India, about 2,600 years ago, where the man Siddharta Gautama was born. Although born a prince, he realized …
Buddha - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Feb 17, 2011 · The Buddha (fl. circa 450 BCE) is the individual whose teachings form the basis of the Buddhist tradition. These teachings, preserved in texts known as the Nikāyas or Āgamas , …
Siddhartha Gautama - World History Encyclopedia
Sep 23, 2020 · Siddhartha Gautama (better known as the Buddha, l. c. 563 - c. 483 BCE) was, according to legend, a Hindu prince who renounced his position and wealth to seek …
From Prince to Enlightened One: The Life Journey of Siddhartha …
May 19, 2025 · Buddha’s only son, Rahula, depicted as an elder, courtesy of Google Art Project. Source: Wikipedia . Several years after his enlightenment, the Buddha returned to his …
Buddha - Spiritual Leader, Age, Married, Children, Enlightenment
Dec 27, 2024 · Who is Buddha? Buddha, originally named Siddhartha Gautama, is revered as the founder of Buddhism and an influential spiritual leader and philosopher. Born around the 6th …
The Buddha - Wikipedia
While the term Buddha is used in the Agamas and the Pali Canon, the oldest surviving written records of the term Buddha is from the middle of the 3rd century BCE, when several Edicts of …
Buddha | Biography, Teachings, Influence, & Facts | Britannica
4 days ago · Buddha, the enlightened teacher and spiritual leader, revolutionized religious thought with his teachings on compassion, mindfulness, and achieving liberation from suffering.
Buddha - Quotes, Teachings & Facts - Biography
Apr 2, 2014 · Who Was Buddha? Buddha, born with the name Siddhartha Gautama, was a teacher, philosopher and spiritual leader who is considered the founder of Buddhism.
Introduction to Basic Beliefs and Tenets of Buddhism
Buddhism is a religion based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama, who was born in the fifth century B.C. in what is now Nepal and northern India. He came to be called "the Buddha," …
Buddhism - Definition, Founder & Origins - HISTORY
Oct 12, 2017 · Buddhism is a faith that was founded by Siddhartha Gautama—also known as “the Buddha”—more than 2,500 years ago in India.
Who was Buddha? A short life story of Buddha Shakyamuni
The life story of the Buddha begins in Lumbini, near the border of Nepal and India, about 2,600 years ago, where the man Siddharta Gautama was born. Although born a prince, he realized …
Buddha - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Feb 17, 2011 · The Buddha (fl. circa 450 BCE) is the individual whose teachings form the basis of the Buddhist tradition. These teachings, preserved in texts known as the Nikāyas or Āgamas , …
Siddhartha Gautama - World History Encyclopedia
Sep 23, 2020 · Siddhartha Gautama (better known as the Buddha, l. c. 563 - c. 483 BCE) was, according to legend, a Hindu prince who renounced his position and wealth to seek …
From Prince to Enlightened One: The Life Journey of Siddhartha …
May 19, 2025 · Buddha’s only son, Rahula, depicted as an elder, courtesy of Google Art Project. Source: Wikipedia . Several years after his enlightenment, the Buddha returned to his …
Buddha - Spiritual Leader, Age, Married, Children, Enlightenment
Dec 27, 2024 · Who is Buddha? Buddha, originally named Siddhartha Gautama, is revered as the founder of Buddhism and an influential spiritual leader and philosopher. Born around the 6th …
