Kureishi's fiction flows easily into the gaps where cultures don't quite meet immigrant culture, native culture, popular culture and the other kind, and he has a splendid handle on the rootless, ruthless lifestyle of the young and disaffected.
This novel is set in the shabby, down at heel, backstreet London where lecturers in minor third level colleges impress their Asian students by dazzling dissections of the androgyny of rock singers hands up everyone who spotted the Prince reference in the title - and raves, Ecstasy and anti Rushdie book burning fervour are the order of the day. But Kureishi, despite his acid pen and apparently endless store of wacky characters, has a soft centre here, as often in his work, love sneakily wins out in the end.
