Amor + odio

This book brings together a varied repertoire of short pieces by Hanif Kureishi: stories, autobiographical texts and essays. A good sample of the narrative talent and the sharp gaze of the writer. Among the first: a businessman travels on a plane that is denied permission to land and the situation becomes complicated. A married couple on the verge of divorce challenge themselves to a race down the street. An exiled Pakistani woman must return to her country to confront her son. A man accompanies a girl out of a party and discovers that she is the daughter of a young love. And a provocative dystopia: a world in which the elderly live for more than one hundred and thirty years and enslave the young to satisfy their sexual whims. As for the autobiographical texts, they range from an evocation of his own sentimental, sexual and literary education to the scam that Kureishi suffered at the hands of his manager, who stole all his savings. And, finally, the essays, on topics ranging from the literary to the sociopolitical: creation and imagination; Kafka's literary mastery; marriage in narrative, film and theater; the emigrant in the European imaginary and the problem of racism.