This is one of those rare books that I have read before albeit seventeen years ago when pretending to be an idealistic student. I liked it back then and I love it now.
It tells the tale of Shahid, a British late-teenager of Pakistani origins and his desire to open his mind through reading and study at a run down, London college. There, he meets several people of huge, conflicting influence on his life. Deedee, a college lecturer, a child of the liberal sixties, stimulates both his mind and body, not always legally one might add. He also meets a group of more extreme muslim students and it is the conflict of satisfying Deedee and this group that is a central theme of this book. This is most evident in the issue of the fatwa issued on Salman Rushdie for his book, 'The Satanic Verses'. The group is determined to support the fatwa and hold their own book-burning session while Shahid wrestles with himself over this arguing several times that we should not be afraid of the written word and instead use it to challenge ourselves regularly.
What makes this book more fascinating for me this time around is the fact that I read it both before and after 9/11. It makes it so relevant and interesting and is a depiction of a small part of the timeline that lead up to that awful day.
This book is an absolute must for all lover of literature, no matter what the genre, to read. The book is not without Kureishi's sense of humour and his support for Shahid and his intellectual dilemmas is clear to see.
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