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The buddha of suburbia by hanif kureishi5/19/2023 He is not English enough (too brown) for some, nor Indian enough (he’s never been there) for others. It is set in the 1970s, when the fact that Karim has an English mother and an Indian father means that he is constantly asked where he is from, as if his very existence required some kind of explanation. At first, Karim is semi-apologetic (he’s almost English) but by the third declaration he is defiantly not proud of it. In the opening paragraph of Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, the seventeen-year-old narrator feels compelled to announce his nationality three times. But I don’t care – Englishman I am (though not proud of it), from the South London suburbs and going somewhere. I am often considered to be a funny kind of Englishman, a new breed as it were, having emerged from two old histories. My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost. You can order it direct from the publishers by clicking here. A version of this article appears in the book London Fictions, edited by Andrew Whitehead and Jerry White – and published by Five Leaves.
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