A celebration of London’s new multiethnic youth culture, this comic novel relates the adventures of the first-person narrator, Karim Amir, the 17-year-old son of a Muslim Indian businessman, Haroon, and an Englishwoman, Margaret. The family resides in the middle-class suburbs south of London, where Karim’s father has recently begun to practice yoga and to preach it as well at upscale parties organized by Eva Kay, the mother of the shallow and self-destructive young man Charlie, upon whom Karim has a crush.

After the first of Eva’s New Age events, Karim sees his father and Eva engaged in illicit intimacies, but when he and Charlie are on the verge of a homoerotic version of the same intimate connection, Haroon sees them and is horrified. Karim’s information about his father’s affair allows him to control Haroon’s homophobic response, but he is helpless to prevent his father’s affair from continuing and ultimately breaking up two formerly contented families.

The novel’s second half moves into London proper—West Kensington—where Eva and Haroon take an apartment. Karim stays with them and revels in the freedom and the excitement of life in the city. He takes up improvisational acting and connects with new women friends as outlets for his libidinal urges and emotional needs, but he retains a deep crush on Charlie, even as his friend is dissolving into the violent, drunken, punk scene just beginning in London.

As Karim begins to find greater success onstage, Charlie discovers an outlet in music, and eventually both young men are drawn to America, the great voracious devourer of popular culture. In New York, Charlie’s quest to reach his limits finally allows Karim to shed his crush and return to the city he loves. There, nothing is the same, and yet life is continuing to move forward in familiar ways as Haroon and Eva announce their plans to marry.

The narrative voice of Karim Amir is the great attraction of The Buddha of Suburbia: it is frank and fresh, vigorous, and contemplative, cheeky and sensitive. Karim is unabashed by the awakening of his amorous drives and uninhibited in the expression of his attraction to both men and women. He finds his place in the larger world without losing the generosity of spirit that makes him such a sympathetic character, continuing to love life—and London—even when events take unexpected turns.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carey, Cynthia. “Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia as a Post-Colonial Novel,” Commonwealth Essays and Studies 4 (1997): 119–125.
Lane, Richard J., Rod Mengham, and Philip Tew. Contemporary British Fiction. Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 2003.

Categories: British Literature, Diaspora Criticism, Literature, Novel Analysis

Tags: 1970s-80s London youth, 20th-century British novel, British multicultural fiction, British novel about growing up, British novel LGBTQ themes, British youth subcultures, coming-of-age novel, contemporary British fiction, cross-cultural family conflict, Diaspora, Diaspora Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, Hanif Kureishi analysis, Hanif Kureishi novel, Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, homophobia in family, improvisational acting in London, interracial family dynamics, Karim Amir character, LGBTQ+ themes in British literature, literature on urban youth culture, London multiethnic youth culture, London suburb life, London to New York cultural journey, London West Kensington, middle-class London suburbs, multicultural identity in literature, multicultural London narrative, Muslim Indian and English family, novel about interracial relationships, postcolonial British fiction, punk scene in London, The Buddha of Suburbia, yoga and New Age culture in London, youth and sexuality in literature