The Nothing

by Hanif Kureishi

Overview

"A punchy, disturbing fable."—Alex Clark, The Guardian

Waldo, a fêted filmmaker, is confined by old age and ill health to his London apartment. Frail and frustrated, he is cared for by his lovely younger wife, Zee. But when he suspects that Zee is beginning an affair with Eddie, "more than an acquaintance and less than a friend for over thirty years," Waldo is pressed to action: determined to expose the couple, he sets himself first to prove his suspicions correct — and then to enact his revenge.

Written with characteristic black humor and with an acute eye for detail, Kureishi’s eagerly awaited novella will have his readers dazzled once again by a brilliant mind at work.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571332021
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	12/03/2019
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 7.70(h) x 2.00(d)

About the Author

Hanif Kureishi grew up in Kent and studied philosophy at King’s College London. His novels include The Buddha of Suburbia, which won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, The Black Album, Intimacy, and The Last Word.

His screenplays include My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay, Sammy and Rosie Get Laid and Le Week-End. He has also published several collections of short stories.

Kureishi has been awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the PEN/Pinter Prize, and is a Commander of the Order of the British Empire. His work has been translated into thirty-six languages. He is professor of Creative Writing at Kingston University.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"No one else casts such a shrewd and gimlet eye on contemporary life." - William Boyd

"Hanif Kureishi delivers a monstrous three-hander in this novel of a frail film director." - GQ

"A punchy, disturbing fable." - Guardian

"Admirers of his earlier fiction will be happy to learn that his appetite for sexual riffs, describing sucking and rimming, or anatomising 'the humiliation of desire' has not abated. But London, the alluring setting of The Buddha of Suburbia (1990), is no longer a source of wonder. 'I preferred the soot-black, more derelict London, which had some sublimity in its post-war despair,' bemoans Waldo. Death and dolefulness permeate every page, but so does a pleasingly lubricious impishness." - Observer

"Hanif Kureishi’s short, sharp tale of revenge is diabolical fun."- Times (London)

Editorial Reviews

The idea of a celibate Hanif Kureishi hero tormented by the very urges he once indulged is an excellent one — think Philip Roth in a chastity belt. Given the current cultural and political climate, in fact, that idea may have even more than usual appeal — New York Times Book Review

Hanif Kureishi’s short, sharp tale of revenge is diabolical fun. — The Times

From the Publisher

11/06/2017
The narrator of Whitbread Prize–winner Kureishi’s caustic latest (after The Last Word) is a dirty old man named Waldo. He’s an angry, impotent, but highly successful filmmaker who suspects his younger wife, Zee, is having an affair with their friend Eddie, a flaneur who’s been hanging around claiming to chronicle Waldo’s glittering past. Waldo, still obsessed by sex but plagued with declining health, spends most of his days trapped in a wheelchair in his London apartment, cooking up schemes to catch Zee and Eddie, destroy the latter, and hold on to the former. He schemes with his actress friend Anita, but, after she helps him gather damning evidence about Eddie, he’s pretty sure she’s turned against him as well. There is not a decent soul or breath of fresh air within these pages; Kureishi rises fiendishly to the challenge of creating disagreeable characters, and true to form indulges in bald, unrelenting talk of sex acts and sex organs. There’s a bit of tormented Hamlet in Waldo, but little philosophy or meat in this wicked little revenge tale. (Jan.)

Publishers Weekly

2017-10-16
A successful and aging film director suspects those he's closest to may be plotting against him.Kureishi's eighth novel (The Last Word, 2015, etc.) is narrated with a blackhearted charm by Waldo, whose illustrious movie career and sexual history are, to his regret, mostly behind him. (He is "old, sick, right out of semen," he informs us in the first sentence.) He putters about his London mansion in his wheelchair ("my chariot of ire"), questioning the attentions of his wife, Zenab, and Eddie, a journalist and fan organizing events on his behalf. Is Eddie as interested in Waldo's art as he says he is? Is Zenab's love for Waldo as pure as she claims? And are the two of them carrying on an affair behind Waldo's back (indeed, in the next room)? Kureishi's slim novel isn't very complex in terms of plot, but it argues that you can have some of your fears confirmed and still be consumed by an unhealthy paranoid attitude. When Eddie disappears with a loan, Waldo calls in an actor friend to investigate, eagerly receiving sexual and financial gossip about the man allegedly cuckolding him. The story is sodden with soap-opera turns (slaps to the face, a scheme to gather enemies in one place), but the book thrives on Waldo's voice, electric with resentment. "I am like an aged ape in a suspended cage in the corner, unable to even spit at the guests," he fumes; recalling his film career, he intones that "we lure audiences into a trap of pleasure by letting them watch crimes." It's hard to love a character so sour, but a man with nothing to lose who's turned resentment into an art form is hard to turn your eyes away from.A short, spiky meditation on mortality delivered with nihilistic glee.

Kirkus Reviews