The story:
When Shahid, with a love of books and writing, leaves home in suburban Sevenoaks to come to a third rate college in West London, he finds himself in a room next door to Riaz, an older student, who befriends him.

Shahid is searching for his own identity and Riaz recognizes this vulnerability and takes Shahid under his wing. He introduces him to a group of fellow muslim students, Chad, Hat, and Tahira.

Shahid is attracted to Riaz’s certainties and is drawn into his group of friends. Meanwhile, he is also attracted to Deedee Osgood, his tutor. She encourages her students to study contemporary culture and Shahid is soon writing about the artist Prince, whose famous bootleg The Black Album gives the play its title.

Meanwhile, Brownlow, Deedee’s husband who also teaches at the college, is struggling to come to terms with the collapse of communism. He sees Riaz, and his politics, as the rightful heirs of the working class struggle.

Into this mix comes the reaction to Salman Rushdie’s book, The Satanic Verses and the fatwa issued by the Ayatollah in Iran – and into Shahid’s new life steps his brother, Chili, who has walked out on his upper-class wife, Zulma.

While Shahid’s new friends are organising to protect a family under attack from racists, Chili and his friend Strapper are living dangerously in the drug and clubbing sub-culture of late 80s London. Everyone is looking for answers, and when Riaz believes he’s found a sign in the middle of an aubergine, Brownlow and the local council leader, George Rudder, decide it’s good politics to humour him.

Shahid has agreed to help Riaz, by editing his poetry, but tensions mount, and Shahid realises that not everyone believes in creative freedom. A book is burnt and soon he and Deedee are running for their lives.
From: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/download.php?id=6435


About the author:
Kureishi was born in London to a Pakistani father and an English mother (Audrey Buss). His father, Rafiushan, was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947. After his parents married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born.

He wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980s London for a film directed by Stephen Frears. It won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie.
The next year, 1991, saw the release of the feature film entitled London Kills Me; a film written and directed by Kureishi himself.

His novel Intimacy (1998) revolved around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons after feeling physically and emotionally rejected by his wife. This created certain controversy as Kureishi himself had recently left his own partner (the editor and producer Tracey Scoffield) and two young sons; it was assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical. In 2000/2001 the novel was adapted to a movie Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film, and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox). It was controversial for its unreserved sex scenes. The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.

Kureishi's drama The Mother was adapted to a movie by Roger Michell, which won a joint First Prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival. It showed a cross-generational relationship with changed roles: a seventy-year-old English lady and grandmother (played by Anne Reid) who seduces her daughter's boyfriend (played by Daniel Craig), a thirty-year-old craftsman. Explicit sex scenes were shown in realistic drawings only, thus avoiding censorship.

His latest novel, Something to Tell You, was published in 2008. His 1989 novel The Black Album, adapted for the theatre, was performed at the National Theatre in July and August 2009.

Kureishi is married, with twin boys, a younger son, and a parrot called Amis. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.


Buchdaten:
Broschiert: 200 Seiten
Verlag: Diesterweg; Auflage: Englische Abteilung. (Juni 2011)
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN-10: 3425048589
ISBN-13: 978-3425048581
ISBN: 3425048589
Preis: € 9,95