In The Black Album (1995), his second novel, Hanif Kureishi revisits territory familiar from his film-script, My Beautiful Laundrette, and his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia. It is another bildungsroman, following the affective and cultural-political development of a young British-Asian who has moved to London from Kent for further education. Like Laundrette, it examines the 'state of the nation' during the Thatcher years, focusing particularly on relations between the races and the predicament of British youth. More specifically, it engages with the controversies surrounding the imposition of the fatwa on Salman Rushdie in 1989. Like The Buddha, The Black Album is much preoccu

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Published 30 June 2002

Citation: Moore-Gilbert, Bart. "The Black Album". The Literary Encyclopedia. 30 June 2002.
[http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1448, accessed 21 November 2009.]