My Son the Fanatic, by Hanif Kureishi (Faber, £7.99 in UK)

Parvez is an Asian cab driver long since settled in a grim north of England town but still an outsider. Anxious to earn acceptance, he has devoted his life to ensuring the success of his son. Now it seems his life's goal has been achieved - his boy is about to marry the police chief inspector's daughter. Or is he? Based on a story from his fiction collection, Love in a Blue Time, Kureishi's close-to-the-bone, highly polemical screenplay succeeds - as does the film - through the sensitive, likable character of the ageing Parvez, desperate for love and still open to romance, which he finds in the form of a local prostitute. Unfortunately for Parvez, his spoilt son has decided Western life and its values no longer impress him. This is a deftly handled, at times funny, story of compromise and cultural cross purposes. E.B.