Briefly about the author:
The short-story ” My Son the Fanatic” is written by the British author Hanif Kureishi. He grew up in England in the 1950s and 1960s, being the son of a Pakistani immigrant and an English woman. He studied philosophy and began writing novels at an early age. Being the son of an immigrant, a majority of his novels unravel the difficulties and challenges a huge amount of immigrants face in their new country, especially the difficulties involved in finding a place to belong. Some of Kureishi’s most famous scripts and novels are among others My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia.
The story: Parvez, the father of the teenage boy Ali, begins noticing changes in his son’s behavior and at first sees this as a good thing. He believes that his son is finally growing out of his teenage attitude and taking more responsibility. However, when Ali begins throwing out valuable belongings and his friends starts avoiding him; Parvez gets seriously worried, and feels as if his son is ungrateful and that he himself has done something wrong as a father.
Finally he opens up to his colleagues who instantly believe that Ali has a drug problem and that he is selling his things to afford drugs, which later is revealed to be incorrect, seeing that he is giving his belongings away to charity. Parvez begins watching every movement Ali makes, but cannot find that anything is physically wrong with his son.
He shortly after finds out that Ali has become interested and fascinated by the religion Islam, and that he spends all his time praying or going to the mosque. While Parvez feels relived, he cannot help feeling frustrated and afraid at the same time. After a disagreement between Ali and his father, in which Ali utters his distaste towards his father’s friendship with an English woman and his consuming of alcohol, Parvez ends up beating his son, to which his son’s only repose is the statement; “So who’s the fanatic now?”.

The setting:
The setting is possibly a middleclass suburb city and they have to work hard to achieve what they wish for; “He, for Ali, had worked long hours and spent a lot of money paying for his education as an accountant”. It is also suggested that the neighborhood where the main characters live, is home to a lot of immigrants, seeing that the father mainly works with people from his own country.
Time:
The plot surely did not take place so long ago, because of the use of video games and computers, but then again, they do use video tapes and therefore it is fair to believe that it must be some time ago, seeing that tapes is not that common nowadays.
Narration/Point of view: The narrative deals with the problems of Parvez, who has migrated from Pakistan to Britain with his son Ali. The story is told from a third person’s prospective, meaning that someone is standing on the outside observing what happens. Characters:
The short-story has two main characters, Parvez, the father, and Ali, the son. Parvez is an immigrant, who has lived in England for at least 20 years, given that this is the period of time he has worked has a taxi-driver there. He is Punjabis, which means that he is part of the Indo-Aryan ethnic group from South-Asia. He is married, although it is never clarified whether his wife is English or not, and he seems to have a certain control over her; “He order her to sit down and keep quiet”. On the contrary, when his son’s change in behavior arises he does not see fit to discuss this with her, and rather turns to his English prostitute friend, whom he has befriended while at work as a taxi-driver. Their relationship is close, and they feel as if they can tell each other everything. For that reason it is fair to believe that their relationship might go deeper than they like to admit, something which is also suggest on numerous occasions; “Bettina put her arms around him” and “As Bettina rubbed his head Parvez told her…”. After telling his friends at the taxi-driver office about his son’s sudden interest in religion, they became unusually silent and this makes Parvez even more nervous. Ali:
Ali is Parvez’s son, good-looking and resembling his father. His exact age is not determined, but he is a teenager on several occasions and he did have an English girlfriend. Before his behavior changes he was a very good student and had a lot of friends. It is not made clear when or why Ali’s interest for religion occurred, but one thing is obvious: his interest for Islam, in many ways, has gone a bit too far. Ali develops a sharp tongue and his friends pull away from him, something which he does not seem to mind. He encloses himself into his oven little world where nothing which is against his belief can be accepted. Ali’s fanatic behavior when it comes to region and his urge to have something to believe in, might be owing to his desire and need to have somewhere to belong and something to indulge in, which can give him a sense of belonging.
Parvez:
Taxi driver for twenty years, grow up in Lahore, he is a Punjabis
Bettina:
She has been a Friend to Parvez for 3 years. prostitute, who drives with Parvez very often and has become a confidante of Parvez. Since Parvez has defended Bettina from a client who had attacked her, they take care of each other. She is in a short skirt, gaudy rings and ice-blue eye shadow, and she smells of a lovely perfume.
Theme:
The short-story focuses on the relationship between Pervez and Ali, a relationship which slowly, but most certainly, decline and is broken down bit by bit. Parvez’s anger is most likely disguised fear. He is afraid that his son will be ill-treated by people who do not accept his belief and that he will get his life destroyed because he becomes too caught up in his belief that he will not accept anybody else.

Conclusion: I, personally, like the short-story. It was well written and informative, though the language was a bit difficult at times. It does addresses an important subject; the urge for us to belong somewhere might lead us onto an unexpected road and that we should not be too hasty to condemn other people’s need to do the same, even though it might be in a different way than we had liked.