Biography
Hanif Kureishi is a British playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He was born on 5 December 1954 in Bromley, Kent, and studied philosophy at King’s College London. He began his career writing plays for theatres including the Royal Court, Hampstead Theatre and the Soho Poly.
Kureishi’s breakthrough came with the screenplay for the 1985 film My Beautiful Laundrette, directed by Stephen Frears, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay. He is also known for the novel The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), which won the Whitbread First Novel Award, and screenplays including Venus (2006) and Le Week-End (2013).
Kureishi was appointed CBE in 2008. In 2022 he suffered a spinal injury that left him paralysed; he later published the memoir Shattered (2024).
