Abstract
Hanif Kureishi has consistently interrogated the concept of home in his writing, especially in texts produced between 1981 and 1997, the period in which he most actively considers issues of race, ethnicity, nationhood and diaspora. Critics of Kureishi's work have generally examined notions of home and identity formation in relation to his second-generation South Asian British characters, but have rarely paid sustained attention to the development of such ideas through his first-generation figures. Thus, beyond some insightful readings of individual South Asian immigrants in a few key texts, Kureishi scholarship currently lacks a fuller discussion of the important, enduring role played by the first generation across his oeuvre; of female migrants; and of the more problematic aspects of these representations. This article addresses such gaps by exploring first-generation selfhood in relation to home (as both nation and domestic space) and return throughout Kureishi's writing, positing reasons for his compulsive textual reliance on these questions.