Hanif Kureishi bags Pinter literary prize

Renowned novelist Hanif Qureshi has bagged a literary prize set up in honour of playwright Harold Pinter.

The Buddha of Suburbia author won the Pen/Pinter prize as he courageously speaks the truth about life in our multicultural world and will receive a cash reward of 1000 pounds during a felicitation ceremony at British Library.

"Hanif Kureishi courageously and irreverently speaks the truth about life in our multicultural world, beyond any platitudes of political correctness. Harold Pinter would have been proud that Hanif was chosen for the prize in his name and that of Pen," the BBC quoted Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter’s widow as saying.

The Pen/Pinter prize is given to a British writer who, in the words of Pinter's Nobel Prize winning speech, casts an unflinching, unswerving gaze upon the world.

Full report here Hindustan Times

Sex is easy and love is more elusive and difficult today

Hanif Kureishi sounded out of breath throughout this telephonic interview. The reason, I discovered later, was because he was gardening while talking. The 56-year-old Kureishi's volume of collected short stories is being released in India by Penguin this month. The London-based author spoke to DNA about the themes that recur in his stories and novels -- sex, drugs and psychoanalysis, success, failure and parenting.

In many of your stories -- In A Blue Time being a case in point -- there is an undercurrent of tension between the demands of family life and that of one's male friends.
Some of these stories were written a long time ago. I guess they are about different kinds of pleasure. The pleasures of domesticity might involve giving up the pleasures of male bonding. Today I don't see the two as being irreconcilable, but I guess back then I didn't see the them as going together.

Have you ever written a story under the influence of narcotics?
I wouldn't do that; that would be madness. Drugs are one thing and writing is another. To write, you need a lot of concentration and patience. It takes a long time to write something. I would work on a story for months -- you wouldn't want to be stoned all that time.

Full interview here DNA