Yet another book from the farm. Yet another 50p I’m glad to
have invested. Yet another read by Hanif Kureishi that is extremely enjoyable
(so much so that it led me and my mom to debate on the author’s status as
one of the 20th century great British all-around intellectuals). Yet another
novel that ultimately left me only half satisfied though.
The Black Album has
many fascinating characters, yet, at the same time, feels immature like the
protagonist. With the exception of the main character, all the others in the
book appear to me to be too monolithic and simply too representative of leftist
intellectualism, Muslim dogmatism or junkie desperation (delete as
appropriate).
That being said, to me The
Black Album is in so many ways a precursor to White Teeth, and that’s no mean feat, as the delirious interactions
between characters and races, the chaotic burning of Rushdie’s The Satanic
Verses (which somehow made me think of the launch of FutureMouse), and clearly
the peripheral London setting kept on reminding me of Zadie Smith’s masterwork.
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