RESULTS

Set in London in 1989, the year of the fatwah and the fall of the Berlin Wall, this is a thriller with a background of raves, ecstasy, religious ferment and sexual passion. The story of a young man in search of experience, torn between the conflicting attractions of religious idealism and sexual love.

Management Teaching use: Woven into the plot of this novel is the theme of succession problems in a small business. After the death of the founder the eldest son, the natural successor, is wasting the proceeds. The youngest son's interests lie elsewhere. The business itself is destroyed, despite having been set up by an entrepreneur who had a vision of the future. Discussion in the classroom could centre on optional strategies available to the founder. In this case was a straightforward passing on of the business the wisest move?

Jay, a failed musician, has walked out on his family and now earns a living as head bartender in a trendy London pub. Every Wednesday afternoon a woman about whom he knows nothing, not even her name, comes to his house for graphic, almost wordless, sex. One day Jay follows her and finds out about the rest of her life, but what will this knowledge mean for their unconventional relationship?

A cynical and at times dry collection of short stories that all deal, in some way, with our notions of sex and relationships. As in much of his recent writing, Kureishi is concerned with the self-destructive and obsessive aspects of love, but his control of language and character are as strong as ever.

My Beautiful Laundrette is set within the Asian community in London, during the 1970s and 1980s when Thatcher was Prime Minister and displays those values. Omar gains the running of his Uncle Nasser's laundrette. His friend Johnny who is an outsider, white but not entirely accepted by either the white or Asian Londoners, helps him. There are many memorable characters: Tania, Omar's cousin whom he might marry. Salim, the manager of Nasser's garage and sometime drug importer and Rachel, Nasser's white mistress, who like Johnny seems to be another outsider.

Management Teaching use: At the centre of this script is a description of the closeknit and sometimes fraught relationships between members of an ethnic community and their family businesses. The difficulties of running such businesses in a scenario of racial tension is also highlighted. Most interesting perhaps, and a subject which should provoke debate, is the way the family are seen to support each other in a variety of enterprises. The text also highlights tensions, which can come to light when the business starts to reach outside its own community.

A selection of the author's early plays, including 'The King and Me', 'Outskirts', 'Borderline' and 'Birds of Passage'. Kureishi's introduction to the volume discusses his early work in the theatre, while assessing the significance of radical British theatre during the 1970s.