Hanif Kureishi is a British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and novelist. He gained prominence with his film My Beautiful Laundrette and the novel The Buddha of Suburbia.

Kureishi was born in London to a Pakistani father and an English mother. His father, Rafiushan, was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947. He came to Britain to study law but soon abandoned his studies.

Among Kureishi's other works are novels such as The Black Album and Intimacy, story collections like Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day, and The Body, and plays such as Outskirts, Borderline, and Sleep With Me. He has also written screenplays, including My Son the Fanatic and Venus. Additionally, he has published collections of essays like Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb, and the memoir My Ear at His Heart.