Anarchic flights, spite-fuelled races, migrants, Kafka, Freud, age and authorship come together in this collection of 15 stories and essays. Some may be familiar: three have appeared in the Guardian, while “A Theft”, about the time a conman took Kureishi’s life savings, has already been published as a slim paperback. When they are good, they are great: Kureishi’s analysis of Kafka, “devilish in his innocence”, is an accessible and insightful piece of literary criticism; his account of growing up under Enoch Powell’s shadow is passionate and astute. Other pieces slip by pleasantly without leaving much impression, while repetition across essays (Kureishi twice tells us his father was rumoured to be an excellent cricketer) encourages the occasional feeling that you’re having a bar-side chat with a bright, garrulous man with a short memory. Still, the strange intimacy that builds between him and the clammy, James Bond-loving conman makes for an intriguing story, and there are sharp and funny observations about writing: “being an artist,” he says, “is a way of being interested in other people without having to sleep with them.”
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