Karim (and, of course, Mr Kureishi) knew exactly how hopeless and annihilating growing up in the suburbs can be, but also how this absence of pretty much everything can provide a fertile ground for dreaming big. As a fellow suburban kid, the first part of the book particularly resonated with me.
Even though I don’t share the same cultural background as Karim, his tales of Indian family, friends, food and places weren’t totally unknown to me (I guess I have to thank the big Indian community in my own city for this) and I found myself nodding and smiling along quite often. The writing is excellent, the characters (most of them) are lovable and the description of the settings made me feel like I was really there. And, despite my Italian edition having nearly 400 pages, I managed to go through it in less than two weeks.
The first read of this novel is something that totally blew my mind. Hanif Kureishi – Writer of The Buddha of Suburbia © Sarah lee So, it comes as no surprise that the plot of The Buddha of Suburbia instantly charmed me: the story of Karim Amir, a 17-year-old “funny kind of Englishman”, living in the South London suburbs with a family that was soon to be collapsing, and who dreamt of the big city to escape the perspective of a boring existence. At the time, my biggest dream was to move to London: I wasn’t sure about what exactly I would’ve done there, but my love for that city was enough to make me put my whole heart and mind into something that I was fully believing in and that would’ve changed my life irreversibly (not even the most catastrophic consequences of Brexit seemed to change my thoughts).
I was 17 and particularly enthusiastic about the coming-of-age genre books and films, perhaps because I needed some platonic friends to grow up with. It was a hot late-summer morning on September 4 th 2018 and I was lying in the bathtub. I still remember as if it was yesterday, the moment I started reading Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia for the first time.
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