Hanif Kureishi is one of Britain's most celebrated novelists and screenwriters. Born in Bromley, Kent, to a Pakistani father and English mother, he was one of the first British Asian writers to bring the experience of the British Asian diaspora into mainstream literature and cinema.
His screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette (1985) was groundbreaking — a story of a British Pakistani man who renovates a laundromat with his white English boyfriend. It was nominated for an Academy Award and transformed the landscape of British cinema. His novel The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel.
Kureishi's work spans novels, short stories, plays, screenplays and autobiography. He has been a fearless chronicler of race, sexuality, class and culture in modern Britain, helping to create space for generations of British Asian writers and artists who came after him.