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Love and hate, and the complex relationship between the two, is the theme of this unusual and thought-provoking collection of stories and essays. A businessman, trapped on a plane that can never land, watches as order breaks down around him; a divorcing husband and wife race each other around the streets near their London home; and a Pakistani mother who lives in Paris returns home to try to rescue her son. Kureishi is clearly a man fascinated by contradictions and contrasts – between parent and child, youth and age, east and west – and intersperses each tale with reflections on the importance of the imagination and on the need for writers to embrace “wild implausibility, boldness and brilliance”.
Perhaps most remarkable is the final piece of reportage, about the con man who stole Kureishi’s life savings. His admission that he came to believe in the man who stole from him, with a faith akin to love, is as brave and honest as any in literature.
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