Pilgrimage: Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia

Abstract

Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia fulfills two basic requirements. On the one hand, the novel works as a caleidoscope of British society at the end of the XXth century. It lets us have a look at such aspects racist violence, the birth and development of punk music, or the situation of theatre in London by the end of the 1970s, just to name a few subjects Kureishi deals with. On the other hand, The Buddha of Suburbia is an account of Karim Amir’s pilgrimage to find himself, bearing in mind he is a half-bred born in a split-up family in the middle of a society that is in a crisis.