Hanif Kureishi is a celebrated British Pakistani playwright, screenwriter, filmmaker, and novelist. Born on 5 December 1954, he gained international recognition for his Oscar-nominated screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette and his novel The Buddha of Suburbia.

Kureishi is the author of numerous novels, including The Buddha of Suburbia, The Black Album, and Intimacy. He has also written story collections such as Love in a Blue Time, Midnight All Day, and The Body. His plays include Outskirts, Borderline, and Sleep With Me, and screenplays like My Beautiful Laundrette, My Son the Fanatic, and Venus.

Among his other works are the collection of essays Dreaming and Scheming, The Word and the Bomb, and the memoir My Ear at His Heart. 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 relocated to Pakistan following the Partition of India in 1947. He moved to Britain to study law but soon abandoned his studies.