A selection of the author's early plays, including "The King and Me", "Outskirts", "Borderline" and "Birds of Passage". Kureishi's introduction to the volume discusses his early work in the theatre, while assessing the significance of radical British theatre during the 1970s.

In 1981 Hanif Kureishi was voted most promising playwright of the year by the London theater critics for his plays Borderline and Outskirts. Since then he has gone on to write acclaimed screenplays, including the script for My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Academy Award nomination for best screenplay, and for his prize-winning works of fiction. This selection of plays shows his development as a writer finding his own territory within the diverse ethnic and cultural mileus of 1990s England and illuminating the conflicts he finds with his characteristically powerful and humorous style.