Representing Fracture: Racial Conflict and Marginality in Hanif Kureishi's Birds of Passage and Outskirts

This thesis examines the theatrical production of one of the most important British writers of the second half of the twentieth century, Hanif Kureishi (1956 -). It begins with an in-depth analysis of the historical, political, and social context of Britain between the 1970s and the 1990s. We witness the rise to power of two political parties, the Labour Party and the Conservative Party. In particular, the thesis delves into the political mandate of Margaret Thatcher, who served as Prime Minister from 1979 to 1990, thus leading the right-wing party to its rise and fall. In his works Hanif Kureishi focuses on the policies implemented by Thatcher, and on the growing protests, violence, and discrimination, especially against minorities of the times. Kureishi’s works, especially Birds of Passage and Outskirts, the two plays analyzed in this thesis, offer special insights into the relationship between the working class and the South Asian foreign minority in the country, who were pitted against each other by the Conservative Party in order to use foreigners as scapegoats and blame them for the country’s problems. The outcome of this analysis confirm the impact Kureishi had on literature and theatre, as a representative of that period of British history. Future research could focus on exploring white working-class writers from the same historical period, such as Alan Sillitoe or Irvine Welsh, to explore differences and similarities in the representation of social tensions.