My Ear at his Heart – Hanif Kureishi

Review from Amazon

"’Hanif Kureishi’s literary memoir explores his relationship with his father, a failed writer. Kurieshi is, of course, hugely successful…’ Esquire This is an ambitious book. Kureshi – free-associating with what feels like unmitigated honesty – successfully conveys the impression that in this book he has actually given us himself.’ Sunday Times ‘Deeply involving, highly intelligent and, in what it doesn’t say rather than what it does, profoundly sad.’ Evening Standard ‘I don’t think he has done anything as good, in any medium, as this moving and fiercely honest book.’ Guardian"

I have only read one Hanif Kureishi book before – one of his novels, "The Buddha of Suburbia"  which I found I didn’t enjoy as much as I expected. That was probably my fault rather than that of the book I am sure. This memoir however appealed to me, and I am glad I have read it. It is a very intelligent memoir, a book about literature, family, culture and how, out of a father’s ambition, all those things came together to create a gifted writer. Both Hanif Kureishi and his father are  revealed honestly within a complicated family structure, where there existed a good deal of rivalry and ambition. Hanif Kureishi contrasts the life he lived in the laid back, drug induced, student London life in the 1970’s with the more rigid atmosphere of the India/Pakisitan of his father’s youth. As Kureishi Jr learns more about his father from his unpublished writings, he starts to look at his own role as a father to his own boys. Overall this is a poignant, beautifully written memoir.