Hanif Kureishi

His father was from a wealthy family based in Madras (now Chennai), whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947.

Rafiushan traveled to the UK in 1950 to study law, but he ran out of money and needed to take a desk job at the Pakistani embassy instead.

There he met his wife-to-be, Audrey Buss, "a young lower-middle-class suburban woman".

He wanted to be a writer but his ambitions were frustrated, "eking out a life of permanent disappointment, writing novels on the kitchen table, but getting turned down."

After the couple married, they settled in Bromley, where their son Hanif Kureishi was born.

In an interview, Kureishi notes:"My [paternal] grandfather, an army doctor, was a colonel in the British Indian Army. Big family. Servants. Tennis court. Cricket. Everything. My father went to the Cathedral School that Salman Rushdie went to. Later, in Pakistan, my family were close to the Bhuttos. My uncle Omar was a newspaper columnist and the manager of the Pakistan cricket team...My grandfather, the colonel, was terrifying. A hard-living, hard-drinking gambler. Womanising. Around him it was like The Godfather. They drank and they gossiped. The women would come and go."

Hanif Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School and studied for A-levels at Bromley College of Technology.

Hanif Kureishi (born 5 December 1954) is a British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker and novelist.

Kureishi was born on 5 December 1954 in Bromley, South London to a Pakistani father, Rafiushan (Shanoo) Kureishi, and an English mother, Audrey Buss.

Kureishi started his career in the 1970s as a pornography writer, under the pseudonyms Antonia French and Karim.

He went on to write plays for the Hampstead Theatre, Soho Poly, and by the age of 18, was with the Royal Court.

While at this college, he was elected as student union president (1972).

Some of the characters from his semi-autobiographical novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, are drawn from this period.

He spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University, then withdrew.

Later he attended King's College London and earned a degree in philosophy.

He wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980s London for a film directed by Stephen Frears.

The screenplay, especially the racial discrimination experienced, contained elements from Hanif's experiences as the only Pakistani student in his class at school.

It won the New York City Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay.

He also wrote the screenplay for Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987).

His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel and was made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie.

1991 saw the release of the feature film titled London Kills Me, written and directed by Kureishi.

As noted by Cathy Galvin in The Telegraph: "But at the core of his life, as described in his memoir My Ear at His Heart is Kureishi’s relationship with his father, Rafiushan, who died in 1991."

Major influences on Kureishi's writing include P.G. Wodehouse and Philip Roth.

Kureishi, who is bisexual, lives in West London.

His entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as "music, cricket, sitting in pubs".

He has twin boys (from his relationship with film producer Tracey Scoffield ) and a younger son.

His 1995 novel The Black Album, adapted for the theatre, was performed at the National Theatre in July and August 2009.

His novel Intimacy (1998) revolved around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons after feeling physically and emotionally rejected by his wife.

This created some controversy as Kureishi recently had left his own partner (the editor and producer Tracey Scoffield) and two young sons; it was assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical.

In 2000/2001, the novel was adapted into the film Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox).

It was controversial for its explicit sex scenes.

The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.

Kureishi's drama The Mother was adapted as a film by Roger Michell, which won a joint First Prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival.

It showed a cross-generational relationship with a reversal of expected roles: a 70-year-old English grandmother (played by Anne Reid) seduces her daughter's boyfriend (played by Daniel Craig), a 30-year-old craftsman.

Explicit sex scenes were shown in realistic drawings only, thus avoiding censorship.

He wrote the 2006 screenplay Venus, and for his performance in this movie, Peter O'Toole received Oscar, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, Broadcast Film Critics Association and Golden Globe nominations in the best actor category.

In 2008, The Times included Kureishi in its list of the 50 greatest British writers since 1945.

A novel titled Something to Tell You was published in 2008.

In May 2011, he was awarded the second Asia House Literature Award on the closing night of the Asia House Literary Festival where he discussed his Collected Essays (Faber).

Kureishi has written non-fiction, including autobiography.