Description:
"The Buddha of Suburbia", Hanif Kureishi's first novel, is a tour de force of comic invention, a bizarre, often hilarious, and totally original picture of the life of a young Pakistani growing up in 1970s Britain. 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.

Review:
Rumbustious and rude novel about a young man growing up with an Indian father and an English mother on the outer fringes of London, by the author of My Beautiful Laundrette. It shows him moving from being a teenager to an adult and chronicles the break-up of his parents' marriage, a move to the big city and the beginnings of a career in acting. Wry, witty, bitchy, but always heartfelt and unusual; winner of the Whitbread prize for the best first novel of 1990.