Something to Tell You
by Hanif Kureishi
Faber & Faber, HK$272
Hanif Kureishi's breakthrough novel The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) was, he has admitted, a highly autobiographical story about a second-generation Pakistani-British teenager trying to escape the rough outer London suburbs and make it into the heart of the city - where only the successful can afford to reside.
In his new novel Something to Tell You, the narrator's life again appears to mirror the author's. It's the story of Jamal Khan, a second-generation middle-aged Pakistani-Brit who has escaped the rundown, diasporic outer London of his childhood and migrated to one of the city's prime areas.
Jamal is a recently divorced psychoanalyst whose patients include A-list celebrities and the upper class. Since his teenage years he has worked industriously to earn and keep what he has - notably his inner-city apartment and shared custody of his 12-year-old son Rafi.