The title to this one is a bit misleading since the 'buddha' of suburbia is only present during the first half of the book. And he doesn't get the role of narrator either - his story, the parts of it that you do get, are told by his son.
The Buddha of the title is the father of Karim Amir, the narrator of the story. His father and uncles emigrated from India as young men - his father married an white woman and his uncle another Indian. Uncle Anwar ran a store with his wife and daughter Jamila while Karim's father worked as a civil servant and his mother in a shoe store. The story begins when Karim is 17 (and ends about three years later) and his father takes up buddhistic principles, going so far as to lead a meditation group with a friend, Eva (whose son Charlie Karim admires greatly, not only for his style but because he's attracted to him - the feeling seems mutual). Karim accompanies him to Eva's house (they all live in South London) one night for one of these sessions which is when he discovers his father is having an affair with Eva. He leaves his wife, moves in with Eva, and Karim bounces between Eva's house, his uncle Ted and Aunt Jean's house (where his mother is staying) and Jamila's house with her parents (he sleeps with Jamila on a regular basis, even after her arranged marriage to Changez, someone who Karim actually likes).
Eva encourages him to enter the theatre, while moving his father and him into the city from the suburbs. His first role is to play Mowgli in Jungle Book, but then he lands a role with a more prestigious company led by Matthew Pyke. He falls in love hard with one of his co-actresses, Eleanor, but she sleeps with Pyke because he is powerful and interesting, so he breaks it off, but not until he has had group sex with Matthew, Eleanor and Matthew's wife. Meanwhile, Charlie has realized his glam band isn't making it and takes up punk instead, becoming the hit singer "Charlie Hero" and moving to New York. The second play Karim is in is highly successful and runs in New York for a month, where he hangs around with Charlie until one night when he watches Charlie in a sub sex role with a dominatrix and realizes that he doesn't care for Charlie anymore. Returning to London, it seems different to Charlie and he realizes it is him that's different.
The story describes not only differences between London and New York, but also class differences between groups in London (and the suburbs).
The book was made into a stageplay by Kureishi, which was produced at the time of a hate-crime in Britain against a young man, Stephen Lawrence, and this created a lot of critical response to the play (and the book).