Hanif Kureishi's new book, "Shattered," chronicles his life after becoming a quadriplegic with stark and unvarnished prose, inevitably leading readers to a profound understanding of his physical condition. The book doesn't shy away from detailing enemas, catheterizations, the rectal plugs used during hydrotherapy, and how strangers wash, clean, and care for his body, even using terms like "shit and urine" as chapter headings.
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03-25, 2025The independent life he once cherished was swiftly replaced by countless indignities. Kureishi couldn't help but ask, "How did I go from a private person to a piece of public meat to be manipulated?" The suddenness of this change is shocking. On December 26, 2022, Kureishi, then 68, was watching a football match in his partner's apartment in Rome when he fell from a chair, landing face first and fracturing his neck. He immediately felt his head separate from his body and woke up lying in a pool of blood, seeing his hand "crawling towards me like a semi-circular claw object."
Although Kureishi had smoked half a joint, drank half a beer, and was recovering from diverticulitis at the time, the accident was purely a matter of chance misfortune: a strange angle, a tilt, a flat fall, resulting in his permanent paralysis. During his hospitalization in Italy, Kureishi began to grapple with his body's plight, igniting a strong desire to write and record everything that was happening. He dictated to his son, Carlo, and began posting on Twitter. Just two weeks after the accident, he wrote: "An insect, a hero, a ghost or Frankenstein's monster. In these mixtures, magnificent horror and wonder will be produced. Every day when I dictate these thoughts, I open the remnants of my shattered body in order to try to contact you and stop myself from dying inside."
It was writing, first on X (Twitter), then on Substack, and finally in his memoir "Shattered," that reignited the "spark of life" and provided him with a refuge. He said that writing "has never been so important to me." Kureishi grew up in London, his mother British and his father an immigrant from Pakistan. In 1985, he received an Oscar nomination for his screenplay for "My Beautiful Laundrette" and was praised for his ability to capture what Zadie Smith called a "new species" or the immigrant family experience.
In 1990, his novel "The Buddha of Suburbia" won the Whitbread First Novel Award. He said that at the time, "there were no books written for people like me." Now, after the accident, he says he sees new creative opportunities, eager to please others, connect with them, and make use of his time. One night, when his head was awkwardly stuck on the edge of the bed, unable to move or call for help, he said, "It seemed like a good opportunity for contemplation."
Speaking at the Adelaide Writers' Festival recently, he was still shaking his fist at fate, angry at "being abandoned in this terrible situation." He doesn't hide the fact that this life is often hellish for him, an extremely unwelcome shock. His partner tells him that at night he growls in his sleep, shouting and crying out. However, his memoir carries a dark humor: "I've never been so busy since I became a vegetable."
But he is also moved and supported by the new discovery of love, and by the vivid beauty he saw in the hospital, at a time when you feel both degraded and cared for. He wrote that going to the gym and seeing "all the patients with broken or deformed bodies, being manipulated and caressed by the therapists, [at that time] something changed inside me. I thought, if you only watch the news and TV shows, you would think the world is a cruel place, inhabited by greedy and narcissistic criminals, when you see the common work done in the gym, it is a beautiful, collaborative and respectful place."
He says that stories of horror and disaster are not the whole of life, that life also includes "harmony, joy, and the pleasure that people can get from each other's company. How much people want to give to another person; how selfless they can be. Gentleness and kindness—there's almost no drama in that, but there's a lot of it." The writer and playwright also observed that others derive pleasure from doing things for him, while recognizing that it is an unequal exchange. Sometimes, he squirms and resists: one day, when his partner Isabella d'Amico tried to floss his teeth while he was dictating to his son, he argued with her, feeling "both like a helpless baby and a terrible tyrant."
But he told me that, most of the time, his illness inspires the best in others, "and seems to inspire the best in myself." Female friends tidy his room, unfamiliar acquaintances stand guard outside his door. In the hospital, you have time to talk, which is something he enjoys.
Kureishi describes conversation as an anti-capitalist activity, a game for adults. One day, he and his friend Lady G discussed cross-dressing, marrying the wrong person, a friend who was struck by lightning, fierce arguments with siblings, and why so many people, especially on the radio, start sentences with the word "so." "My friends come to see me every day, they bring me three-course meals, they read me the newspaper, they comb my hair, they give me head massages, they feed me, and so on," he said. "The nurses and doctors, I would have long conversations with them, about their lives, about who they are. ... You can say to them, why are you doing this? What brought you here? Why are you in this country? Why are you doing this job? You can have the most incredible conversations."
"I tell you, if you want to meet new people, breaking your neck is a good idea. If you are interested in other people, you want to hear their stories. There are a lot of those stories. So, I don't see the world as a terrible hell, where people like to kill each other, it is that, but I see the other side of it. Actually, I still see the other side of it, especially with my friends, those who come to see me every day and spend time with me. So, spending a year in the hospital was a very enlightening experience." You find yourself asking—what kind of person am I? What kind of friend am I?
Kureishi's candor is rare. People who are sick or disabled often feel compelled or obliged to hide or beautify their experiences. But when I read it, this honesty broke me down. It's clear that this is how he stays upright: writing, acerbic humor, and the gentle care of others. "Shattered" is not written with gentle retrospection, but as he says, "from the trenches." Others may also resonate with the long hours spent in the hospital, the extreme helplessness, the shock, the sadness, and the powerlessness as random accidents upend the future.
He can't use his hands, can't write, can't walk, can't use his legs. He says that all he has left is his voice: "So in a sense, I'm still myself, I'm still an artist." "We are bodies that will fail. Our bodies need doctors and nurses to manage them. On the other hand, we are souls. We are souls that transcend our bodily selves and communicate with others. So, I think this book explores the fact that we have all these things at the same time. But for me, writing is the way I transcend the horror of my experience and get back to living a little, and that's very important."
"I am still able to enjoy life. I am still able to feel happiness. I am still able to have conversations. There is so much more to a person's life than people imagine."
