The Buddha of Suburbia

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Karim lives with his Mum and Dad in a suburb of south London and dreams of making his escape to the bright lights of the big city. But his father is no ordinary Dad, he is 'the buddha of suburbia', a strange and compelling figure whose powers of meditation hold a circle of would-be mystics spellbound with the fascinations of the East.

Among his disciples is the glamorous and ambitious Eva, and when 'the buddha of suburbia' runs off with her to a crumbling flat in Barons Court, Karim's life becomes changed in ways that even he had never dreamed of . . .

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Kureishi is the author of two controversial screenplays, My Beautiful Launderette (1985) and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid (1987). This novel, written in a similar vein, deals with many of the same themes: father-son relations, punk rock, bisexuality, and class and racial prejudices in England. The story is told through the eyes of Karim Amir, ``an Englishman born and bred, almost.'' Karim is a Holden Caulfield-like character who observes and analyzes the shortcomings of his society as he moves out of London's suburbs into the larger world. The book provides a witty, satiric view of English popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s, but it is fairly thin on plot and character development. This may be one instance where the movie version will actually be better than the book.-- William Gargan, Brooklyn Coll. Lib., CUNY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Midway through the first page of this delectable first novel by screenwriter Kureishi ( My Beautiful Laundrette ; Sammy and Rosie Get Laid ), the 17-year-old narrator--``My name is Karim Amir, and I am an Englishman born and bred, almost''--observes that the plodding existence he has shared with his Indian father and English mother is about to undergo a disorienting change. The catalyst is the father, a civil servant and self-proclaimed guru whose falling in love with one of his followers precipitates events that propel his restless son out of the suburbs and into the fast lane. Karim relates these developments in a series of erotically charged episodes no less charming for their undercurrent of desperation. Though continually yanked about among disparate cultures, classes, colors, even genders--``I felt it would be heartbreaking to have to choose one or the other, like having to decide between the Beatles and the Rolling Stones''--Karim never loses his capacity for affectionate mockery. Resembling a modern-day Tom Jones , this is an astonishing book, full of intelligence and elan. 25,000 first printing; first serial to Mother Jones; QPB alternate;author tour. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

The author of the screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette brings to this first novel some of the same quirky virtues that made that movie such a surprising hit. As in the film, the conditions of Asian immigrants living in London, the racism of the British class system, and the sexual ambiguity of his characters are the themes that preoccupy Kureishi. Karim faces a full load of adolescent conflict in his young life: he's attracted to both boys and girls, his Moslem father has suddenly turned into a Buddhist guru and left Karim's mother, his school career seems to be bogged down in indifference if not outright hostility, his relatives seem caught unawares between East and West, and Karim himself observes all kinds of success for everyone but himself. In Kureishi's tragicomic view of the world, however, Karim's vulnerability and persistence eventually pay off. Meanwhile, Karim suffers through a string of experiences that are by turns hilarious, poignant, and threatening before fortune begins to smile, change is accepted, and murmured promises are fulfilled. --John Brosnahan

Kirkus Book Review

This remarkably fine first novel from the author of the screenplays My Beautiful Launderette and Sammy and Rosie Get Laid is a freewheeling tour through the London of the 1970's--a London as vice- and class-ridden as that of a Hogarth engraving But the narrator, like that other 18th-century hero Tom Jones, relieves this bleakness with humor and sympathy. Karim is the son of an English woman and a Moslem from India, who had come to London to study the law but married instead. Karim's father, the Buddha of the title, is a handsome man of great charm who lightens the tedium of his clerk's job and suburban home-life by taking classes and reading. As the novel begins, Karim, still in high school; accompanies his father to a neighbor's house, where, to Karim's surprise, his father lectures on Buddhism and demonstrates yoga. The neighbor, Eva, artistic and ambitious, becomes his father's mistress, and his father moves in with her. Though torn by divided loyalties, Karim yearns for a wider life than that offered by suburban South London, and is willing to experiment. For a while he is infatuated with Eva's son, a beautiful and untalented musician, but with ambition enough to get him eventually to New York. Karim moves with his father to London, and through Eva's introduction becomes an actor, a reasonably successful one by the end. Along the way, Karim moves back and forth between the immigrant Indian world of small shops and arranged marriages, the drug-taking sexually experimental, and the politically posturing world of the theater. Karim samples it all as he struggles to ""locate myself and learn what the heart is."" Though graphically explicit at times, there is something satisfyingly old-fashioned about this rite-of-passage novel. Kureishi's affectionate portrayal of his very varied characters, his loving evocation of London, old and corrupt as it may be, the freedom from polemic, and the beguiling openness of Karim, make this a memorable contribution to that other English literature--that of the immigrant. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.