Acclaimed writer Hanif Kureishi blasts fellow Left-wingers over woke censorship trends now
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One of Britain's leading writers has attacked the role of 'sensitivity readers', saying they get 'excited' by controlling others' freedom of expression.
In a passionately argued commentary, Hanif Kureishi blames an 'element of the Left', which he says is 'bursting with aggressive self-righteousness and is puritanical and self-defeating'.
His comments inflict a wounding blow on the metropolitan elite, of which the avowedly Left-wing Kureishi has always been a committed member.
The 68-year-old prize-winning author, playwright and filmmaker said his award-winning 1990 novel The Buddha Of Suburbia would be butchered by censors if it was written today 'in this atmosphere of self-consciousness and trepidation, this North Korea of the mind'.
This is a reference to the readers increasingly hired by publishers to review texts for offensive content.
Hanif Kureishi says an 'element of the Left' is 'bursting with aggressive self-righteousness'
Earlier this year books by James Bond author Ian Fleming were stripped of terms deemed sexist and racist. Roald Dahl's novels have also been changed.
Kureishi found fame nearly four decades ago with his screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette, about an interracial gay
