الفهرس 
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Abstract
This study falls into four chapters. The first and second chapters provide the theoretical background of the research. They highlight the fundamental themes, concerns and ideas that are going to be applied to the works of fiction. The last two chapters expose the dilemma of the immigrant subject in multicultural Britain through a reading of the texts of two ethnic writers, i.e, Kureishi, and Smith. The fact that the British multicultural experience is narrated from two different voices and ethnic backgrounds (Pakistani and Jamaican respectively), enhances shared notions of multicultural integration, highlights the problems of assimilation and provides a clearer view of multicultural London.
Chapter One, “Multiculturalism: a Theory versus a Condition”, provides a bird’s eye view of the multicultural situation of contemporary British society with reference to the changing nature of multicultural London. The chapter tries to answer an important question, i.e., is multiculturalism a theory or a condition? It gives an account of the origin, definition and types of the term. The ideas of multicultural critics like Andrew Heywood, C. James Trotman, Bhikhu Parekh and Turner Tereme are discussed in relation to the theories of postmodernism and postcolonialism. The chapter focuses on two main ideas. On one hand, multicultural thought preserves ethno – cultural identity and sustains religious beliefs, rituals, customs, traditions, lifestyle, food habits, dress codes and socio cultural habits. On the other hand, multicultural ideas use several disciplines to highlight neglected aspects of social history, particularly the histories of women and minorities. The rest of the chapter is devoted to the study of multiculturalism as a celebration of pluralism. It is not about racial minorities but about bringing harmonious relations between different cultural communities. In a nutshell, multiculturalism tries to restore a sense of wholeness in a postmodern era that fragments human life and thought.
As its title implies, “Contemporary Multicultural British Fiction”, the second chapter is primarily concerned with the characteristics of contemporary multicultural British fiction. These characteristics are traced and applied to the two chosen ethnic novels in the next chapters. The most important features of ethnic British novel of transformation include heterogeneity, the proposition that the concept of Britishness is subject to change and the attempt of finding a voice in the public sphere. The chapter illustrates that the life of the other has become part of the self and depicts the identity conflicts taking place in the immigrant society in London. This part distinguishes between first, second and third generation ethnic writers. While first and second generation immigrants internalized the hostility and repulsion of the host society, the third generation was determined to stand the ground beneath their feet to assert their presence.
Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia is examined in Chapter Three to show that second-generation immigrants are often more flexible than their immigrant parents. Kureishi was born in London to a Pakistani father and an English mother. His father, Rafiushan, was from a wealthy Madras family, most of whose members moved to Pakistan after the Partition of India in 1947. He came to Britain to study law but soon abandoned his studies. After meeting and marrying Kureishi’s mother Audrey, Rafiushan settled in Bromley, where Kureishi was born, and worked at the Pakistan Embassy. Kureishi attended Bromley Technical High School. He spent a year studying philosophy at Lancaster University before dropping out. Later he attended King’s College London and took a degree in philosophy. Kureishi started his career in the seventies and among his most famous works are My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), The Black Album (1995), Intimacy (1998) and Something to Tell You (2008).
The chapter shows how the characters negotiate ways of being British via their heritage and immediate family across various boundaries including those of class, gender, and culture. In this novel, the suburbs are a leaving place from which Kureishi’s characters must move away to London which is depicted as a completely different world. The chapter highlights that the characters’ expectations of the city are great and their move into the city is like a pilgrimage. On the whole, London is associated with the characters’ dreams to manifest their bicultural dilemma. The last section of the chapter concentrates on the transition of Kureishi from a representative to a postethnic writer as he abandons ethnicity and tries to normalize the fact of blackness. Instead of being a minority writer, Kureishi transcends ethnicity and disputes its confinements.
The last chapter goes one step further to reflect on Smith’s White Teeth. Smith, the daughter of a Jamaican mother and an English father, studied English literature at the University of Cambridge. While there, she began writing White Teeth, and completed the novel in 2000. She also wrote The Autograph Man (2002), On Beauty (2005) and NW (2012) which deal with the treatment of race, religion, and cultural identity.