Midnight All Day - Softcover

Hanif Kureishi

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0571203914 ISBN 13: 9780571203918

Publisher: Faber & Faber, 2000

Synopsis

140pages. in8. Broché. Hanif Kureishi's previous book, Intimacy-an account of the writer's abandonment of his marriage-divided critical opinion violently, but the novel's unsparing honesty marked it as one of Kureishi's best works, with an excoriating, spiky cussedness that sidestepped the wheedling self-justifications of most "confessional" books. Midnight All Day, his new collection of short stories, continues his exploration of the irrational impulses of desire. Some of the protagonists here seem to be barely disguised avatars of the author, as if Kureishi had felt compelled to go over the earlier material obsessively, from different angles, through different voices: a prismatic opening up of the emotional complexity of Intimacy (the book is alluded to in the first story; elsewhere there are uneasy discussions about the ethics of writing). There is a clinical quality to his observations, an anatomisation born not of indifference but of fascinated curiosity at the perplexing disarray of human relationships, the shifts from desperate need to boredom, the uneasy fragility of the alliances that lovers make: "We are unerring in our choice of lovers, particularly when we require the wrong person. There is an instinct, magnet or aerial which seeks the unsuitable. The wrong person is, of course, right for something-to punish, bully or humiliate us, let us down, leave us for dead, or, worst of all , give us the impression that they are not inappropriate, but almost right, thus hanging us in love's limbo. " He perhaps shows in these stories that what he has always been interested in is the unfathomable pitch of sexuality-ultimately idiosyncratic and endlessly fascinating, a chaotic accumulation of people's myriad specific needs, anxieties and desires. Kureishi has moved away from the more obviously politicised terrain of earlier work, though elegiac glimpses of it surface occasionally, ruminations on the wake of idealism. If the long years of Thatcherism made.

About this title

About the Author:

Hanif Kureishi grew up in Kent and studied philosophy at King's College London. His novels include The Buddha of Suburbia, which won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, The Black Album, Intimacy and The Last Word. His screenplays include My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and Le Week-End. He has also published several collections of short stories. He has been awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and been translated into thirty six languages., Hanif Kureishi was born and brought up in Kent. He read philosophy at King's College, London. In 1981 he won the George Devine Award for his plays Outskirts and Borderline, and in 1982 he was appointed Writer-in-Residence at the Royal Court Theatre. In 1984 he wrote My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. His second screenplay Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987) was followed by London Kills Me (1991) which he also directed. The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel in 1990 and was made into a four-part drama series by the BBC in 1993. His version of Brecht's Mother Courage has been produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal National Theatre. His second novel, The Black Album, was published in 1995. With Jon Savage he edited The Faber Book of Pop (1995). His first collection of short stories, Love in a Blue Time, was published in 1997. His story My Son the Fanatic, from that collection, was adapted for film and released in 1998. Intimacy, his third novel, was published in 1998, and a film of the same title, based on the novel and other stories by the author, was released in 2001 and won the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. His play Sleep With Me premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 1999. His second collection of stories, Midnight All Day, was published in 2000. Gabriel's Gift, his fourth novel, was published in 2001. The Body and Seven Stories and Dreaming and Scheming, a collection of essays, were published in 2002. His screenplay The Mother was directed by Roger Michell and released in 2003. In 2004 he published his play When The Night Begins and a memoir, My Ear At His Heart. A second collection of essays, The Word and the Bomb, followed in 2005. His screenplay Venus was directed by Roger Michell in 2006. His novel Something to Tell You was published in 2008. In July 2009 his adaptation of his novel, The Black Album, opened at the National Theatre, prior to a nation-wide tour. In 2010 his Collected Stories were published. He has been awarded the Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

About this edition

• Publisher: Faber & Faber
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0571203914
• ISBN 13: 9780571203918
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 140