In Shattered, Hanif Kureishi wrestles with his shift from private man to public piece of meat. He also finds love

It's impossible to read Shattered, Hanif Kureishi's raw, unvarnished account of his life as a tetraplegic, without coming to an intimate understanding of the workings of his body. Enemas in his backside — the British author calls his arse "Route 66" — catheters in his penis, butt plugs inserted during hydrotherapy, the fingers of strangers in every nook and cranny, washing him, cleaning him, excavating him. Chapters start with sentences like, "shit and piss".

A cherished independence swiftly replaced with myriad indignities. "How did I go from being a private man," he asks, "to a public piece of meat?"

It's a shocking story. On December 26, 2022, at the age of 68, Kureishi toppled from his chair whilst watching football at his partner's apartment in Rome. He fell flat on his face and broke his neck. It immediately felt as though his head had disconnected from his body. He came to in a pool of blood, watching his hand, a "scooped, semi-circular object with talons scuttling towards me".

Kureishi had smoked half a joint, drank half a beer, and was recovering from diverticulitis, but it was a random stroke of bad luck; an odd angle, a tilt, a flat fall, and permanent paralysis.

As he began to wrestle, and rage, against what had happened to his body whilst in an Italian hospital, Kureishi felt a burning urge to write about what was happening to him. Dictating to his son Carlo, he began to tweet. Just two weeks after his accident, one post read: "An insect, a hero, a ghost or Frankenstein's monster. Out of these mixings will come magnificent horrors and amazements. Every day when I dictate these thoughts, I open what is left of my broken body in order to try and reach you, to stop myself from dying inside."

It is the writing, first on X then Substack then his memoir, Shattered, that enables "a spark of life" and a refuge. Writing, he says, "has never mattered to me more".

An urge for connection

Growing up in London with a British mother and a father who had emigrated from Pakistan, Kureishi was nominated for an Oscar in 1985 for his screenplay of his book, My Beautiful Laundrette, and lauded for his ability to capture the experience of what Zadie Smith called "new-breeds", or immigrant families.

In 1990, his novel The Buddha of Suburbia won the Whitbread prize for best first novel. There had been no books, he said, "for people like me".

Now, after the accident, he says he has seen new opportunities for creativity out of an urge to delight people, to connect with people and use his time. One night, when his head jammed awkwardly down the side of his bed, he found himself unable to move and unable to call for help, he says: "It seemed like a good opportunity for some contemplation."

When I spoke to him recently at the Adelaide Writers' Festival, he was still shaking his fist at fate, furious at having been "dumped in this awful condition". He does not pretend this life is anything but often hellish for him, a profoundly unwelcome shock, most of the time.

At night, his partner tells him, he rages in his sleep, yelling and crying loudly. His memoir is, though, blackly funny: "Since I became a vegetable I have never been so busy."

But he has also been moved and sustained by new discoveries about, to his own surprise, love. And the stark beauty you can see in hospitals, at a time you feel both reduced and cared for.

He writes about going to the gym and seeing "all the patients with their broken or malformed bodies being manipulated and caressed by the physiotherapists, [when] something in me changed. I thought, if you only watch the news and TV shows, you get the impression that the world is a harsh place, inhabited by money-grubbing and narcissistic criminals, when you see the mutual work done in the gym, it is a place of beauty, collaboration and respect."

Conversation as an anti-capitalist activity

Tales of terror and catastrophe, he says, are not the whole story of life, which would have to include "stretches of harmony, joy and the pleasure that people can take in each other's company. How much people want to give another; how altruistic they can be. Gentleness and kindness — it's hardly dramatic, but there's a lot of it about."

The author and playwright also watches others get pleasure from doing things for him, whilst aware it is an unequal exchange. At times, he writhes and objects: one day when his partner Isabella d'Amico was trying to floss his teeth when he was dictating to his son, he fights with her, coming to feel like "both a helpless baby and a terrible tyrant".

Mostly though, he told me, his illness has brought out the best in others "and seems to have done the same to me". Female friends tidy his room, remote acquaintances shadow his door.

In hospital you have time to talk, too, something he luxuriates in.

Kureishi describes conversation as a kind of anti-capitalist activity, play for adults. With his friend, Lady G, one day, he discusses cross-dressing, marrying the wrong person, a friend who was struck by lightning, violent disputes with siblings, and why so many people, especially on radio, begin sentences with the word "so" .

"Friends of mine came to visit me every single day, and they brought me three course meals, and they would read the newspapers to me, and they would brush my hair, and they would give me a head massage, and they would feed me, and so on," he said. "And the nurses and doctors, I would have long conversations with them about their lives, about who they were. … You could say to them, Why are you doing this? What brought you here? Why are you in this country? Why do you want to do this job? And you could have the most incredible conversations.

"I tell you, if you want to meet new people, it's a good idea to break your neck. And if you're interested in other people, you want to hear their stories. There's plenty of them. So, far from thinking of the world as being this terrible hellhole where people love to kill each other, which it is, I saw another side of it. Actually, I still see another side of it, particularly with my friends, the people who come and visit me every day and spent time with me. So it was a very illuminating experience to be in hospital for a year."

You find yourself asking — what kind of person am I? What kind of friend?

'I'm still capable of happiness'

Kureishi's candour is rare. The ill or broken so often feel compelled or forced to hide or sanitise their experiences. But this honesty unravelled me when I read it. It's clear this is how he has Stayed Upright: writing, caustic humour, and the gentle care of others.

Shattered was written not with gentle hindsight, but "from the trenches", as he says. Others, too, may relate to the long stints spent in hospital, acute defencelessness, shock, grief and impotence when random accidents upend futures.

He can't use his hands, can't write, can't walk, can't use his legs. What he has left, he said , is his voice: "So I'm still myself, in some sense, and I'm still an artist."

"We are bodies that fail. We are our bodies that require to be administered to by doctors and nurses. On the other hand, we are spirits. We are souls that rise above our bodily selves that communicate with other people. So, I think the book explores the fact that we're all those things at once. But for me, writing is the way in which I could transcend the horror of my experience and get back to living a little which is very important.

"I'm still capable of enjoying life. I'm still capable of happiness. I'm still capable of conversation. There's much, much more to one's life than one might think."

This is part of a regular series called Staying Upright, where I explore how humans manage to persist, despite everything. Feel free to contact me here.