THE BLACK ALBUM is the second novel by Hanif Kureishi, one of the most praised and influential writers of our times. It is set in London in 1989, the year after the second acid-fuelled 'summer of love' - also the year in which the Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced his infamous fatwa upon Salman Rushdie. THE BLACK ALBUM is a portrait of a young Asian man being pulled in conflicting directions: one way by the lure of sexual and hallucinogenic hedonism, another by the austere certitudes of Islam. Shahid Hasan, a clean-cut kid from the provinces, comes to London after the death of his father. He makes his home in a Kilburn bedsit, falls in love with postmodernist college lecturer Deedee Osgood, and soon finds himself passionately embroiled in a spiritual battle between liberalism and fundamentalism.