Book Review: The Buddha of Suburbia

Written by Hanif Kureishi, The Buddha of Suburbia is a novel that explores themes such as immigration, racism, and the inability to adapt from a perspective of racial and social tensions in London in the 1970s. It is an autobiographical novel and is partially based on the life of Kureishi, who migrated to England from Pakistan as a half British. Like him, the protagonist Karim Amir is a half-English and half-Indian man who struggles to find his place and discover who he is and becomes more mature and enlightened over time.

Right from the start, we can observe Karim wanting to get rid of life in the suburb where there are also immigrants. He seems easily bored because of the identity crisis he is going through. Despite being depressed and wanting to communicate with the English, he is despised by them, which further deteriorates his depression. Later, his father, Haroon, is introduced. He doesn't reject his orient background and finds it more confident to dedicate himself to Buddhism. But this is not because he is interested in Eastern culture or appreciates it, only as a way of surviving among the Westerners. As English women like certain aspects of the Eastern culture such as meditating and yoga, he promotes his culture for the sake of earning money.

A comic adaptation of The Buddha of Suburbia

Both Karim and his father seem to fail to adapt to the English way of living. Internalized racism and cultural shock in occasions like this can be observed through the psychological conditions of the characters. Another thing is that even though Haroon is mocked and humiliated by the British, Karim supports their mannerism, instead of his father’s. Karim also has a brother, Amar, who tries to look like the Westerners, and appreciates the Western culture as he is fond of it. He even changes his name to Allie, a more European name, in order to avoid racial trouble.

Later, the poor conditions of the immigrants are portrayed. Although they all suffer from poverty, they are disillusioned and not even aware of their own situation. No matter how the immigrants try to communicate, the British only care about themselves and put a distance between them and the immigrants who try to improve themselves just for the sake of having a relationship with the Westerners, but they fail anyway. Throughout the work, we see the immigrant’s longing to be accepted by the English.

The work is significant from certain perspectives, especially the Postcolonial criticism of Edward Said. For him, Orientalism serves hegemonic purposes for Western discourse, which shapes the orient and attributes inferiority through the binary oppositions of orient and occident. And without the inferior, there would not be a superior one. This causes the concept mentioned by Homi Babbha, the otherness. Since two different culture clashes, there emerges tension, and the inferior becomes the other. In order to get rid of this position, the colonized resort to mimicry, imitating the mannerism of the colonizers, strengthening their identity crisis.