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 moved to Pakistan after the Partition of British India in 1947. He came to Britain to study law but soon abandoned his studies and later worked at the Pakistan Embassy. After his father and mother (Audrey Buss) married, the family settled in Bromley where Kureishi was born.

He attended Bromley Technical High School (where David Bowie had also been a pupil) and after taking his A levels at a local sixth form college, he spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University before dropping out. Later he attended King's College London and took a degree in philosophy.

Kureishi started his career in the '70s as a pornography writer.

He wrote My Beautiful Laundrette in 1985, a screenplay about a gay Pakistani-British boy growing up in 1980s London for a film directed by Stephen Frears. It won the New York Film Critics Best Screenplay Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay.

His book The Buddha of Suburbia (1990) won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel, and was also made into a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie.

The next year, 1991, saw the release of the feature film entitled London Kills Me; a film written and directed by Kureishi himself.

His novel Intimacy (1998) revolved around the story of a man leaving his wife and two young sons after feeling physically and emotionally rejected by his wife. This created certain controversy as Kureishi himself had recently left his own partner (the editor and producer Tracey Scoffield) and two young sons; it was assumed to be at least semi-autobiographical. In 2000/2001 the novel was adapted to a movie Intimacy by Patrice Chéreau, which won two Bears at the Berlin Film Festival: a Golden Bear for Best Film, and a Silver Bear for Best Actress (Kerry Fox). It was controversial for its unreserved sex scenes. The book was translated into Persian by Niki Karimi in 2005.

His family have accused him of exploiting them with thinly disguised references in his work; Kureishi has denied the claims. His sister Yasmin has accused him of selling her family "down the line". She wrote, in a letter to The Guardian, that if her family's history had to become public she would not stand by and let it be "fabricated for the entertainment of the public or for Hanif's profit". She says that his description of her family's working class roots are fictitious. Their grandfather was not "cloth cap working class", their mother never worked in a shoe factory, and their father, she says, was not a bitter old man.

Yasmin takes up issues with her brother not merely for his thinly disguised autobiographical references in his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, but also for the image about his past that he portrays in newspaper interviews. She wrote: "My father was angry when The Buddha of Suburbia came out as he felt that Hanif had robbed him of his dignity, and he didn't speak to Hanif for about a year."

Kureishi's drama The Mother was adapted to a movie by Roger Michell, which won a joint First Prize in the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes Film Festival. It showed a cross-generational relationship with changed roles: a seventy-year-old English lady and grandmother (played by Anne Reid) who seduces her daughter's boyfriend (played by Daniel Craig), a thirty-year-old craftsman. Explicit sex scenes were shown in realistic drawings only, thus avoiding censorship.

His 2006 screenplay Venus saw Oscar, BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, Broadcast Film Critics Association and Golden Globe nominations for Peter O'Toole in the best actor category.

His latest novel, Something to Tell You, was published in 2008. His 1989 novel The Black Album, adapted for the theatre, was performed at the National Theatre in July and August 2009.

In 2009, he donated the short story Long Ago Yesterday to Oxfam's 'Ox-Tales' project, four collections of UK stories written by 38 authors. His story was published in the 'Earth' collection.

Kureishi is married, with twin boys, a younger son, and a parrot called Amis. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.

Novels

• 1990 The Buddha of Suburbia. London: Faber and Faber.
• 1995 The Black Album. London: Faber and Faber.
• 1998 Intimacy. London: Faber and Faber.
• 2001 Gabriel's Gift. London: Faber and Faber.
• 2003 The Body. London: Faber and Faber.
• 2008 Something to Tell You. London: Faber and Faber.

Story collections

• 1997 Love in a Blue Time London: Faber and Faber.
• 1999 Midnight All Day. London: Faber and Faber.

Plays and screenplays

• 1988 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid. London: Faber and Faber.
• 1991 London Kills Me. London: Faber and Faber.
• 1996 My Beautiful Laundrette and other writings. London: Faber and Faber.
• 1997 My Son The Fanatic. London: Faber and Faber.
• 1999 Hanif Kureishi Plays One. London: Faber and Faber.
• 1999 Sleep With Me. London: Faber and Faber.
• 2002 Collected Screenplays Volume I. London: Faber and Faber.
• 2003 The "Mother". London: Faber and Faber.
• 2007 Venus. London: Faber and Faber.
• 2009 The Black Album (adapted from the novel). London: Faber and Faber.

Nonfiction

• 2002 Dreaming and Scheming: Reflections on Writing and Politics
• 2004 My Ear at His Heart. London: Faber and Faber.
• 2005 Word And The Bomb . London: Faber and Faber.

As editor

1995 The Faber Book of Pop. London: Faber and Faber.

Critical works about Kureishi

• Moore-Gilbert, Bart. Hanif Kureishi (Contemporary World Writers). Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001.
• Ranasinha, Ruvani. Hanif Kureishi (Writers and Their Work). Devon: Northcote House Publishers Ltd, 2002.

Screenplays

• 1985 My Beautiful Laundrette
• 1987 Sammy and Rosie Get Laid
• 1991 London Kills Me (and director)
• 1993 The Buddha of Suburbia (television miniseries, based on the novel)
• 1997 My Son the Fanatic (based on his own short story of the same title)
• 1999 Mauvaise passe (aka The Escort, aka The Wrong Blonde) (with Michel Blanc)
• 2003 The God of Small Tales (short) (with Akram Khan)
• 2003 The Mother (adapted from the play)
• 2006 Venus
• 2007 Weddings and Beheadings (2007)

Story basis only

2001 Intimacy

Producer

2006 Souvenir