Hanif Kureshi On The Couch: An Exclusive Interview With the Novelist and Screenwriter - Johann Hari

Hanif Kureishi is embarked on an experiment. "I am determined," he says with an expressionless stare, "to live without illusions. I want to look at reality straight. Without hiding. No more bullshit."

Ever since I read his first novel, 'The Buddha of Suburbia', I have imagined Kureishi to be a living version of the novel's protagonist, Karim. He is a beautiful mixed-race boy from the suburbs, determined to dream and shag and saunter his way to the big city. But what, I always wondered, happens when the Buddha of Suburbia sags into late middle age? Where did Karim go? Over the years I had heard depressing rumours about Kureishi - that his story dissolved into the success-cliché of hard partying and hard drugs, and he ended up half-mad and suicidal and scribbling nasty novellas about his ex-wife.

When he walks into Café Rouge in Shepherd's Bush, those stories deflate with a small hiss. He is a slim, short 54-year old with a lingering raddled handsomeness. At first glance, he looks like a vaguely trendy North London doctor. He greets me with an emotionless voice - as if asking about my symptoms - and we sit in the corner and coolly order coffee.

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V Disillusioned?

When your illusions are gone - dismantled and dead on a psychoanalyst's chair - what do you have left? Kureishi leans forward. "Other people. The people you love. Your family. Your group. Your work."

This is our parting sentiment. For hours, he has told me you can be unillusioned without being disillusioned. He has said you can let your ugliest feelings speak freely without being conquered by them. He has said it in a persuasive monotone. But standing outside Café Rouge in the West London chill, I peer back through the window, at Kureishi with his spectral father hanging over him, and I wonder if it is true.