Where life was bottomless in its temptations... » Portrait de l’étranger en « flâneur » dans l’œuvre d’Hanif Kureishi

The multiplicity of types investigated by HK, starting from the short stories (Love in a Blue Time) up to the plays (Borderline) not leaving out the novels (The Bhudda of Suburbia or The Black Album) contribute to surrounding his work with a sulphurous aura. The feeling of freedom and the various possibilities which emerge from such stories, examine the question of identities, since the character appears so split up and therefore open to decompartmentalization. Kureishi’s work thus appears as a particular field of analysis of the twofold question of the strange in relationship it has with the foreigner. The various characters of the « foreigner » and their complexity, which we shall deal with in this article, reveal themselves in all their oddness in a context where these two notions at times intermingle, coincide or confront each other. We might therefore ask ourselves what forms they take on in his work, showing that they are the object of a truly literary reappropriation.