The Black Album – Hanif Kureishi

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.

The Autobiography of Malcolm X – Malcolm X and Alex Haley

A book that was given to me as a Christmas gift by one of my closest friends and, despite my normal lack of enthusiasm for (auto)biographies (or even cinematic bio-pics), was actually a quality present.

Despite teaching 20^th century history, I didn’t know much about Malcolm X, so this book was quite eye-opening – I’m not going to debate up to what extent it truly reflects the man’s life (how could I?) but it surely does justice to his myth.

As I read it I kept thinking how much he would have despised me as a rich, white European who teaches on the history of Ghana or Pakistan by starting with the disclaimer “well, I’m a rich, white European” – would have I been the worse of the liberals? And would he have changed his mind after his Hajj

One thing that really struck me was the faith Malcolm X seemed to have in non-white leaders: Elijah Muhammad, Kwame Nkrumah, and even Mao are praised time and again, but, as far as I know, were quite far from being saints themselves (despite the fact that at the time of writing, in Nkrumah’s case, the temptation to identify him as the prototype of the enlightened African leader was quite clearly extremely tempting for everyone).

As I approached the autobiography, I expected its latter parts to be the most exciting ones, but I have to say the chapters I liked the most were probably the early ones, the ones on Detroit Red, the hustler, with his passion for jazz (and his encounters with all the big names of the time) and for swindling people.