Latest news with #Kureishi
The Guardian
25-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘It was a buddy movie – and then they kissed': Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi on My Beautiful Laundrette at 40
It is a sweltering summer afternoon and I'm blowing bubbles over the heads of Stephen Frears and Hanif Kureishi while they have their pictures taken in a sun-dappled corner of the latter's garden. Perched in front of them as they sit side by side – Kureishi, who has been tetraplegic since breaking his neck in a fall in 2022, is in a wheelchair – is a silver cake made to look like a washing machine, commissioned to mark the 40th anniversary of their witty, raunchy comedy-drama My Beautiful Laundrette. Some of the bubbles land on the cake's surface, causing everyone present to make a mental note to skip the icing, while others burst on the brim of Frears's hat or drift into Kureishi's eyes. It is not perhaps the most dignified look for an esteemed duo celebrating an enduring Oscar-nominated gem. Don't think they haven't noticed, either. As the bubbles pop around them, Kureishi upbraids the photographer for trampling on his garden – 'Mind my flowers!' – while Frears grumbles: 'I could be watching the cricket.' Get them on to the subject of the film, though, and an aura of pride soon prevails. No wonder. My Beautiful Laundrette, which revolves around a run-down dive transformed into 'a jewel in the jacksie of south London' by an Anglo-Pakistani entrepreneur and his lover, did many things: it distilled and critiqued an entire political movement (Thatcherism), portrayed gay desire in unfashionably relaxed terms, and audaciously blended social realism with fable-like magic and cinematic grandeur. It launched a writer (Kureishi), a production company (Working Title, later the home of Richard Curtis), a prestigious composer (Hans Zimmer) and, most strikingly, one of the greatest of all actors: Daniel Day-Lewis, who plays Johnny, the ex-National Front thug teaming up (and copping off) with his former schoolmate Omar (Gordon Warnecke). Or 'Omo' as Johnny teasingly calls him even as he licks his neck in public or they douse one another in champagne. It is well known that Gary Oldman and Tim Roth were also in the running to play Johnny. Frears adds an unlikelier name to the mix. 'Kenneth Branagh came to see me,' says the 84-year-old film-maker. 'Half a second and you knew: 'Well, he's not right.' But good for him for wanting to do it.' The leading candidate seemed clear in Frears's mind, and not only because Day-Lewis threatened to break his legs if he didn't cast him. 'All the girls said: 'You want Dan.' He was top of the crumpet list at the Royal Court.' On screen, he is magnetically minimalist. 'Dan loved Clint Eastwood,' Kureishi points out. 'He loved how still Clint was. You can see the influence: Dan doesn't move very much.' Frears detected the echo of an even older star. 'I remember him standing by the lamppost under the bridge in the scene where he and Omar meet again, and I thought: 'Ah, I see. You want to play it like Marlene Dietrich.'' Kureishi, now 70, was already established as a young playwright before he wrote the film. Not that his father was impressed. 'He hadn't come to this country to see his son doing little plays above pubs,' he says in between sips of kefir. 'He thought I'd never make a living as a writer, so I really wanted to get moving.' Frears once likened reading My Beautiful Laundrette to 'finding a new continent'. In writing it, Kureishi combined scraps of autobiography with cinematic tropes. 'My dad had got me involved with a family friend called Uncle Adi, who ran garages and owned properties. He was kind of a grifter. He took me around these launderettes he owned in the hope that I would run them for him. They were awful fucking places; people were shooting up in there. So I thought I'd write about a bloke running a launderette. Then I thought: 'Well, he needs a friend.' It could be a buddy movie, like The Sting. But I couldn't get a hold on it. Then, as I was writing, they kissed – and suddenly everything seemed more purposeful. Now it was a love story as well as a story about a bloke going into business.' The tension between Omar and Johnny, his formerly racist pal-turned-lover, was drawn from Kureishi's own experience of growing up in south London. 'Lots of my friends had become skinheads. My best friend turned up at my house one day with cropped hair, boots, Ben Sherman shirt, all the gear. My dad nearly had a heart attack. He'd spent a lot of time trying not to be beaten up by skinheads. It was terrifying to be a Pakistani in south London in the 1970s.' Omar's uncle, exuberantly played by Saeed Jaffrey, was similarly lifted from life. 'He was based on a friend of my father's: a good-time boy who had a white mistress.' That lover was played in the film by Shirley Anne Field, star of the kitchen-sink classic Saturday Night and Sunday Morning. 'She was a woman of such grace and elegance,' sighs Kureishi. 'Dan and I would interrogate her all the time: 'Who's the most famous person you've slept with?' She'd slept with President Kennedy. And George Harrison!' He still sounds amazed. When Frears came on board, he made some invaluable suggestions. 'Stephen told me: 'Make it dirty,'' says Kureishi. 'That's a great note. Writing about race had been quite uptight and po-faced. You saw Pakistanis or Indians as a victimised group. And here you had these entrepreneurial, quite violent Godfather-like figures. He also kept telling me to make it like a western.' Frears looks surprised: 'Did I?' Kureishi replies: 'Yeah. I never knew what that meant.' There are visual touches that suggest the genre: a Butch Cassidy-esque bicycle ride, a Searchers-style final camera set-up peering through a doorway, not to mention a magnificent crane shot that hoists us from the back of the launderette and over its roof. 'I think what Stephen meant is that it's about two gangs getting ready to fight. The Pakistani group and the white thugs. There's something coming down the line.' His other note to Kureishi was that the film should have a happy ending. Why? 'We'd asked people to invest so much in these characters,' says Frears. 'And a sad ending is quite easy in an odd sort of way. This one's only happy in the last 10 seconds.' Kureishi agrees: 'Yeah. But you leave the cinema in a cheerful mood.' It was a happy ending for the film-makers, too. Frears recalls one reviewer observing that while Kureishi might not be able to spell, he could certainly write. That reminds me: the story goes that Kureishi deliberately misspelt the title as an indictment of his own education. But he scotches that rumour. 'I'm from Bromley,' he says. 'I thought that was how you spelled it.' If the film was a skyrocket for its writer, it heralded a new chapter for Frears. He had recently made his second film for cinema – the stylish, ruminative thriller The Hit starring Roth, John Hurt and Terence Stamp – 13 years after his debut, Gumshoe. Ironically, My Beautiful Laundrette, which was shot on 16mm for just £600,000, was only intended to be screened on Channel 4. But a rapturous premiere at the Edinburgh film festival, accompanied by acclaim from critics including the Guardian's Derek Malcolm, made a cinema release the only possible launchpad. Kureishi recalls that trip with fondness. 'I was in Edinburgh with Tim Bevan [of Working Title] and Dan, and we all slept in the same room. I made sure I got the bed, and the others were on the floor. Dan didn't even have a suitcase, just a toothbrush. Every night, he'd wash his underwear and his socks in the sink and put them on again the next day.' Blown up to 35mm, this low-budget TV film became a magnet for rave reviews here and in the US (the New Yorker's Pauline Kael called it 'startlingly fresh'), bagged Kureishi an Oscar nomination and helped reinvigorate Frears's movie career, paving the way for later hits including Dangerous Liaisons, The Grifters and The Queen. Neither of them has seen it recently. 'I don't watch my old films,' Frears says with a grimace. 'You either sit there thinking: 'I should have done that better.' Or else: 'That's rather good. Why can't I do that any more?'' I assure them that the picture looks better than ever, whether it's the visual panache of Oliver Stapleton's cinematography or the enchanting subtlety of Warnecke's performance, which was rather overshadowed by Day-Lewis at the time but can now be seen to chart delicately Omar's gradual blossoming. It goes without saying that My Beautiful Laundrette was ahead of its time, especially in its blase approach to queerness. When the picture was released in the UK at the end of 1985, homophobia was becoming more virulent and widespread in the media as cases of Aids escalated. The Conservative government's section 28 legislation, outlawing the 'promotion' of homosexuality by local authorities, was just over two years away. The timing of the film's re-emergence today is not lost on its author. 'It's so hard to be gay now,' says Kureishi. 'There's all this hostility toward LGBT people, so it feels important that the film is out there again in this heavily politicised world where being gay or trans is constantly objectified. It's a horrible time.' Interviewed in 1986 by Film Comment magazine, however, Kureishi dismissed the idea of it as a 'gay film', and derided the whole concept of categories. 'There's no such thing as a gay or black sensibility,' he said then. How does he feel today? 'I still don't want to be put in a category. I didn't like it when people called me a 'writer of colour' because I'm more than that.' The film, too, is multilayered. 'It's about class, Thatcherism, the Britain that was emerging from the new entrepreneurial culture. I didn't want it to be restricted by race or sexuality, and that hasn't changed.' I wonder if it rankles, then, that My Beautiful Laundrette was voted the seventh best LGBTQ+ film of all time in a 2016 BFI poll. And it does – though not for the reason I had anticipated. 'What was above it?' demands Frears in a huff. 'Why didn't it win?' Still, both men are thrilled that the film was embraced by queer audiences. 'If Stephen and I have done anything to make more people gay, we'd be rather proud of that.' My Beautiful Laundrette is in cinemas from 1 August. Frears, Kureishi and Warnecke will take part in a Q&A following a screening on 25 July at the Cinema Rediscovered festival in Bristol
Business Recorder
01-07-2025
- Business
- Business Recorder
PBC appoints Javed Kureishi as new CEO
KARACHI: The Pakistan Business Council (PBC) board has announced the appointment of Javed Kureishi as its new Chief Executive Officer. Kureishi is a seasoned Citibanker with 34 years of leadership experience across Pakistan, Egypt, South Africa, the Czech Republic, the UAE, and Singapore. He has held senior regional roles across Asia, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and Africa and is an expert in emerging market strategy, stakeholder engagement, and policy advocacy. According to the announcement, the PBC board of directors unanimously selected Javed Kureishi as the new Chief Executive Officer, effective July 11, 2025. The Board of Directors of PBC also extended its heartfelt appreciation to the outgoing CEO, Ehsan Malik, for his leadership and commendable service over the past ten years. During his tenure, Malik significantly strengthened PBC's position as a leading voice for the formal business sector and progressive economic policy in Pakistan. His efforts advanced stakeholder engagement and reinforced the organization's commitment to responsible business practices. Javed Kureishi currently sits on the boards of KElectric, PIA Holding Co, Fauji Food, Pakistan Oxygen Ltd, Samba Bank, Lucky Electric, and Tricon Boston, with prior directorships at the Pakistan Stock Exchange, Power Cement, Naya Nazimabad, the Pakistan Cricket Board, Sindh Infrastructure Development Co Ltd, and Pakistan Corporate Restructuring Co Ltd and served as Senior Consultant to IFC Pakistan. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
The Hindu
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Review of Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
People who love Hanif Kureishi's work as a novelist and screenwriter were in for a rude shock as news of his fall and spinal cord injury in Rome made headlines in 2022. It was horrifying to imagine the enormity of his agony, as he was confined to a hospital bed and forced to take on the identity of a patient. He could no longer 'walk, write or wash himself', and struggled to accept this new reality that made him 'entirely dependent on the goodwill of others', as recounted in his new book Shattered — a profound work of contemplative prose. At the outset, the memoir compels the reader to think about what it means to write, not only as an outlet for creative expression or as a tool for socio-political change but as a physical act. The fall, we are told, resulted in neck hyperextension and immediate tetraplegia, which rendered Kureishi unable to move his limbs, scratch his nose, feed himself or make a phone call. He wondered if he would ever manage to hold a pen, or walk on his own. It began as 'a series of despatches' dictated to his partner, Isabella, and his sons Sachin, Carlo and Kier from hospital beds in Italy and in the U.K., where he now lives. These dictated drafts were revised, expanded and edited in the same collaborative manner with Carlo. Honest look at care The book offers an honest glimpse of how frustrating it can be to ask for and receive support. Kureishi admits, for instance, how impatient he gets with Isabella. 'She is Italian and English is her second language, so she doesn't always get what I say,' he notes. This slows down the process of his dictation and her note-taking. He acknowledges that his condition is a huge drain on her, and he is unsure if he would have been capable of offering the care she does. While this could be a fair evaluation of his own personality, it could be read as an admission of how patriarchy normalises the unequal distribution of care work in intimate relationships. Shattered belongs to the genre of autopathography, which focuses on autobiographical narratives about the experience of illness. It captures the inner life of a person who has nowhere to go and must learn to keep his mind occupied, even distracted, to avoid succumbing to suicidal thoughts. He thinks of himself as a 'vegetable', feels jealous of people who have 'fit bodies', and feels bad for himself because he cannot go back to the life he once enjoyed. In one of these moments, Kureishi writes, 'Will I ever get out of this, will I die here? I think about killing myself by overdosing. It would be a relief.' Leaning on humour Kureishi shows what it is like to feel imprisoned in a space that is meant to help him recover. He speaks on behalf of every person who has felt disempowered by the medical-industrial complex because it treats their body as an object to be inspected rather than respected. Since the food tastes like cardboard, and it is boring to stare at empty walls for hours at a stretch, Kureishi entertains himself by writing about the quirks of nurses and physiotherapists at the hospital. He appreciates their cheerfulness and hard work and feels sorry that they are not paid adequately for their labour. On one occasion, after three physiotherapists walk into his room, he remarks, 'I have become a big admirer of Italian men… Their skin is smooth and it glows. Their sharp dark body hair is inspiring. They are neither macho nor mummy's boys.' It is the author's sense of humour that seems to protect him from losing his bearings during this excruciating period. The humour is often dark and politically incorrect. Kureishi believes that psychiatrists are not good listeners; they are too eager to diagnose and prescribe anti-depressants. About his own psychiatrist, Kureishi writes, 'I've ended up analysing his dreams. Since he was struck by how often he dreams about Donald Trump, I had to inform him of how much he envies Trump's brutality and freedom to do or say whatever occurs to him.' This book makes the reader think about how people with disabilities are expected to be victims, heroes, or grateful beneficiaries of charity rather than complicated, imperfect beings who craft their own unique paths out of the hell they have been thrust into. Kureishi allows himself to whine and admit how 'the sick can dominate a family, sucking out all the oxygen' even as he expresses appreciation for his loved ones. This memoir is the story of his determination 'to keep writing' and draw sustenance from words. In doing so, he has created a book that will give courage to the hopeless and evoke empathy in the cold-hearted. (Assistance for overcoming suicidal thoughts is available on these 24x7 helplines: KIRAN 1800-599-0019, Aasra 9820466726.) The reviewer is a journalist, educator and literary critic. Shattered Hanif Kureishi Hamish Hamilton ₹999
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A New Kind of ‘Illness Realism'
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Illness and literature have frequently been bedfellows. Tuberculosis, for example, shortened the life and influenced the work of authors as varied as Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka, and the Brontë sisters. We can't know what In Search of Lost Time would have looked like if a variety of ailments had not left Marcel Proust in his bed during his youth. To infer that sickness begets literature would be misleading—perhaps even dangerous. But once in a while, it forces a writer to undergo a radical artistic transformation—one so serious that they might reconsider what books can do. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic's Books section: What Christopher Hitchens understood about the Parthenon The modern voice of war writing A novelist who looks into the dark This week, Hillary Kelly wrote for The Atlantic about a visit with Hanif Kureishi, the award-winning British author who, in 2022, at age 68, began to feel faint and lost consciousness. When he awoke in a hospital, he learned that he had broken his neck, and was paraplegic. Kureishi was already well established before his debilitating injury. In fact, he confessed to Kelly, he believes success had made him too comfortable. 'I was happy having a good life,' he said. 'I thought, Fuck it. Why should I spend all day working? … I didn't have much of a desire to write anymore.' But after his fall, beginning in his first days in the hospital, Kureishi started to write furiously. A flurry of social-media posts earned him sympathy and admiration for his truth-telling. Over two years of immobility and constant care, that intensity has not abated. A new book, Shattered, collects essays from his first year. In defining what's new about the book's 'illness realism,' Kelly draws on Virginia Woolf, another writer who faced serious health challenges. In On Being Ill, Woolf wrote that 'things are said, truths blurted out' on the sickbed 'which the cautious respectability of health conceals.' Kureishi, Kelly writes, conveys these truths unvarnished: 'He has no distance from himself or his condition, and refuses to add any.' Kureishi told Kelly that he hasn't been able to read since his fall; he hasn't even read his own book. Last week in The Atlantic, Kristen Martin wrote about another unusual memoir that presents a very different example of how a health emergency can rewire an author's work. Sarah Chihaya's Bibliophobia is, Martin writes, 'an account of how her reliance on books played a major role in a crisis, leading her, for a time, to fear them.' In 2019, after a lifetime of devoted reading, Chihaya was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, after which she found herself unable to read (or to write the book that would secure her tenure as a Princeton professor). What eventually helped her emerge—and to write this memoir—was a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, which provided 'a new plot for her life, based in reality rather than fiction.' Writing—of a new, almost unbearably honest kind—seemed to have helped both of these authors communicate intensely isolating experiences to readers. For the ill person, Woolf wrote, 'the whole landscape of life lies remote and fair, like the shore seen from a ship far out at sea.' Yet that seascape, too, belongs to life; most readers find themselves there at some point. And an author may teach them how to navigate the tides. Hanif Kureishi's Relentlessly Revealing Memoir By Hillary Kelly How a tragic accident helped the author find his rebellious voice again Read the full article. , by Sarah Viren At first, To Name the Bigger Lie seems like a straightforward coming-of-age story. As a high-school student in 1990s Tampa, Florida, Viren falls under the sway of her charismatic teacher Dr. Whiles, who is intent on pushing his students to question the nature of the truth. His pedagogy involves exposing his class, often uncritically, to conspiracy theories that include Holocaust denialism. Years later, in 2016, Viren sets out to write a book that treats that period in her life as an allegory for the rise of fascism in the United States. But, partway through the writing, her wife—an academic, like Viren—is falsely accused of sexual harassment, and the ensuing Title IX investigation becomes part of Viren's narrative. The surprising convergences that Viren finds between the case and Dr. Whiles's teaching—both of which turn out to be fraught, harmful ways of trying to access the truth—culminate in a chilling interrogation of the fact-finding methods that our institutions rely on. — Tajja Isen From our list: Read these books—just trust us 📚 You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip, by Kelsey McKinney 📚 Loca, by Alejandro Heredia 📚 Blood Ties, by Jo Nesbø The Dictatorship of the Engineer By Franklin Foer Despite this history of failure, Americans haven't shaken the hope that some benevolent, hyperrational leader, immune to the temptations of political power, will step in to redesign the nation, to solve the problems that politicians can't. That hope is unbreakable, because American culture invests engineers with the aura of wizardry. This is true for Elon Musk. For years, the media glorified him as a magician who harnessed the power of the sun, who revived the American space program, who rescued the electric car. Given that hagiographic press, some of it deserved, he could easily believe in his own ability to fix the American government—and think that a large chunk of the nation would believe that, too. Read the full article. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Sign up for The Wonder Reader, a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Explore all of our newsletters. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
07-02-2025
- Health
- Atlantic
A New Kind of ‘Illness Realism'
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Illness and literature have frequently been bedfellows. Tuberculosis, for example, shortened the life and influenced the work of authors as varied as Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka, and the Brontë sisters. We can't know what In Search of Lost Time would have looked like if a variety of ailments had not left Marcel Proust in his bed during his youth. To infer that sickness begets literature would be misleading—perhaps even dangerous. But once in a while, it forces a writer to undergo a radical artistic transformation—one so serious that they might reconsider what books can do. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic 's Books section: This week, Hillary Kelly wrote for The Atlantic about a visit with Hanif Kureishi, the award-winning British author who, in 2022, at age 68, began to feel faint and lost consciousness. When he awoke in a hospital, he learned that he had broken his neck, and was paraplegic. Kureishi was already well established before his debilitating injury. In fact, he confessed to Kelly, he believes success had made him too comfortable. 'I was happy having a good life,' he said. 'I thought, Fuck it. Why should I spend all day working? … I didn't have much of a desire to write anymore.' But after his fall, beginning in his first days in the hospital, Kureishi started to write furiously. A flurry of social-media posts earned him sympathy and admiration for his truth-telling. Over two years of immobility and constant care, that intensity has not abated. A new book, Shattered, collects essays from his first year. In defining what's new about the book's 'illness realism,' Kelly draws on Virginia Woolf, another writer who faced serious health challenges. In On Being Ill, Woolf wrote that 'things are said, truths blurted out' on the sickbed 'which the cautious respectability of health conceals.' Kureishi, Kelly writes, conveys these truths unvarnished: 'He has no distance from himself or his condition, and refuses to add any.' Kureishi told Kelly that he hasn't been able to read since his fall; he hasn't even read his own book. Last week in The Atlantic, Kristen Martin wrote about another unusual memoir that presents a very different example of how a health emergency can rewire an author's work. Sarah Chihaya's Bibliophobia is, Martin writes, 'an account of how her reliance on books played a major role in a crisis, leading her, for a time, to fear them.' In 2019, after a lifetime of devoted reading, Chihaya was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, after which she found herself unable to read (or to write the book that would secure her tenure as a Princeton professor). What eventually helped her emerge—and to write this memoir—was a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, which provided 'a new plot for her life, based in reality rather than fiction.' Writing—of a new, almost unbearably honest kind—seemed to have helped both of these authors communicate intensely isolating experiences to readers. For the ill person, Woolf wrote, 'the whole landscape of life lies remote and fair, like the shore seen from a ship far out at sea.' Yet that seascape, too, belongs to life; most readers find themselves there at some point. And an author may teach them how to navigate the tides. Hanif Kureishi's Relentlessly Revealing Memoir By Hillary Kelly How a tragic accident helped the author find his rebellious voice again What to Read To Name the Bigger Lie, by Sarah Viren At first, To Name the Bigger Lie seems like a straightforward coming-of-age story. As a high-school student in 1990s Tampa, Florida, Viren falls under the sway of her charismatic teacher Dr. Whiles, who is intent on pushing his students to question the nature of the truth. His pedagogy involves exposing his class, often uncritically, to conspiracy theories that include Holocaust denialism. Years later, in 2016, Viren sets out to write a book that treats that period in her life as an allegory for the rise of fascism in the United States. But, partway through the writing, her wife—an academic, like Viren—is falsely accused of sexual harassment, and the ensuing Title IX investigation becomes part of Viren's narrative. The surprising convergences that Viren finds between the case and Dr. Whiles's teaching—both of which turn out to be fraught, harmful ways of trying to access the truth—culminate in a chilling interrogation of the fact-finding methods that our institutions rely on. — Tajja Isen Out Next Week 📚 You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip, by Kelsey McKinney 📚 Loca, by Alejandro Heredia 📚 Blood Ties, by Jo Nesbø Your Weekend Read The Dictatorship of the Engineer By Franklin Foer Despite this history of failure, Americans haven't shaken the hope that some benevolent, hyperrational leader, immune to the temptations of political power, will step in to redesign the nation, to solve the problems that politicians can't. That hope is unbreakable, because American culture invests engineers with the aura of wizardry. This is true for Elon Musk. For years, the media glorified him as a magician who harnessed the power of the sun, who revived the American space program, who rescued the electric car. Given that hagiographic press, some of it deserved, he could easily believe in his own ability to fix the American government—and think that a large chunk of the nation would believe that, too. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
