Shattered: A Memoir
By Hanif Kureishi
Hamish Hamilton
ISBN: ISBN: 978-0241667958
336pp.

Hanif Kureishi’s new work, Shattered: A Memoir is a collection of ‘dispatches’, essentially a diary, originally dictated by Kureishi while hospitalised in Rome and later London, following the accident which left him paralysed.

Kureishi’s words, taken down by his partner, Isabella d’Amico, or his sons, Sachin, Keir and Carlo, “as events happened” were posted online as The Kureishi Chronicles. These were revised and edited by Kureishi, with the help of Carlo, and published as a book, divided according to the five hospitals in which he was treated, except for the brief first section, named ‘The Fall.’

That section captures that unexpected moment in Rome when Kureishi felt dizzy while watching TV. He leant forward and put his head between his legs. He “woke up in a pool of blood” with Isabella kneeling beside him. His neck was “grotesquely twisted”, his immobile hand seemed a “scooped semi-circular object with talons.” He thought he was dying.

The date was December 26, 2022: Kureishi and Isabella, who is Italian, had come from London to Rome for a Christmas holiday. Instead, Kureishi was admitted into Gemelli Hospital. A neck operation restored “sensation and some movement” but his spine was damaged. He could not move his arms, legs or head. However, on January 6, “determined to keep writing” he spoke out the words for his first dispatch which Isabella typed into her iPad.

Hanif Kureishi’s new book is a riveting and courageous memoir about the accident that left him paralysed and his experiences and thoughts at the five hospitals he was treated at

His next entry reflects on his childhood in Kent, his discovery of literature and writing as a liberation from racist taunts at school and academic failures there. His reminiscences are disrupted by the exigencies of the present: “Excuse me for a moment, I must have an enema.”

Kureishi’s narrative is remarkable for the skill with which he interweaves and juxtaposes the many different aspects of his world(s). Medical procedures, the interaction with the hospital staff, the care that Isabella takes of him, the pressures and fatigue she endures, are all built into his account. His moments of joy include the wonder of being placed in a sling, moved from his bed, into a wheelchair for physiotherapy, and the sheer delight of seeing, for the first time, the opposite side of the room: it has a window framing a blue sky, trees, clouds and birds.

Meanwhile, Carlo has flown in from London. He is soon joined by his twin Sachin, and the younger Keir: they burst into tears when they see their father. But all three prove good company with their humour, upbeat attitudes and help. Kureishi often contemplates the reversal of roles, as his sons look after him now, whereas once he had taken care of them. He writes with pride of Carlo and Sachin’s achievements as writers, and Keir as a piano and guitar teacher.

Literary references are central to Kureishi’s narrative, including that terrifying night when his “head became jammed down the side of the bed” and no one could hear him to help. He occupies himself by contemplating growing up with a literary father; his interest in the life-writing of famous writers, including James Baldwin, his hero; then working in London’s theatre world, as a teenage usher and, later, in a bookshop, where glimpses of literary luminaries and encounters with supportive writers helped him develop as a writer. While Raymond Carver’s quote, of a nurse aiding a helpless man with no hands, captures Kureishi’s own immobility and rescue, earlier, a scene from Kafka’s Metamorphosis echoes his own metamorphosis.

Soon, Kureishi is moved to the high-tech Santa Lucia Hospital for rehabilitation. The advanced machines used for physiotherapy include the “robot-like” Lokomat, which helps Kureishi walk briefly. The first time he is able to stand is a time of great exhilaration. But mood swings, helplessness, angst about sexuality, permeate his narrative alongside medical issues, including intrusive, undignified medical procedures.

At the same time, he finds comfort in the company of two new best friends, Miss S and Maestro, both wheelchair-bound fellow patients. An old friend flies in from Canada; his supportive ex-wife, Tracey, comes from London. Kureishi is overwhelmed at the unexpected kindness of many. He is glad that Isabella has supportive friends and family in Rome, though he worries that her work, running a PR agency for writers, has been almost abandoned to look after him.

In Rome’s hospitals, Kureishi tries to cope with his inability to understand Italian: it reminds him of the Punjabi and Urdu he heard in his childhood home, and which he didn’t understand either. He contrasts his mother, Audrey, a withdrawn working-class Englishwoman, with his lively father, Rafiushan Kureishi, who came to Britain for higher education, settled there, joined the Pakistan High Commission and loved cricket: he named Hanif after the cricketing legend Hanif Mohammed.

In Shattered, the contemplation of British politics, colonialism, migration, identity and race, are linked to the development of Kureishi’s career. He recalls his surprise at the Oscar nomination for his screenplay My Beautiful Laundrette and comments on subsequent developments in his career, including his resolve to employ a different genre with his first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia.

Kureishi longs to return to London, but there is much red-tape with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) before he can do so. In mid-July 2023, he is moved into London’s Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. He finds it busy, noisy and old-fashioned after Italian hospitals, but has many visitors.

He goes for “walks” on familiar roads outside the hospital, pushed in a wheelchair by a son or Isabella. Sadly, being in his home city, though not in his home, reminds him of the life that he has lost. This contributes to anxiety, sleeplessness and depression.

Moved to Charing Cross Hospital, which specialises in spinal injuries, and a quieter more peaceful place, he receives intensive physiotherapy, but various medical and emotional difficulties and troubled dreams continue. The psychoanalyst, who Kureishi has been going to for 30 years, tells him that he believes Kureishi will “find some living force within” himself and will not give up.

Kureishi later mentions his long interest in dreams, which not only contributed to his writing but also led him to take courses on psychoanalysis, during his undergraduate years at King’s College in London.

In Shattered, the final section ‘The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, Stanmore’ begins with Kureishi’s restlessness and despair at this rehabilitation centre. He asks, “Paki, writer, cripple, who am I now?” He reflects on issues of identity so central to his life and his work. Gradually, the narrative begins to move quietly from uncertainty to hope.

Unlike earlier London hospitals, he forges close bonds with other disabled patients, moving around in an electric wheelchair, into different rooms to chat. He begins to think being semi-immobilised is not a big deal after all. By early November 2023, he is able to stand for 20 minutes with someone on either side of him, though he still can’t brush his teeth.

Finally, on December 20, 2023, almost a year after his accident, Kureishi moves back into his house in Shepherd’s Bush, duly altered to accommodate his needs. Elated, confused and relieved, with government-provided carers to help, Kureishi and Isabella enter into an organised routine, with Carlo working with Hanif on Shattered.

And then one morning, as he is taken by Sachin and Keir across the neighbourhood in his motorised wheelchair and given a haircut by his old barber too, the assertion of a familiar territory, a known world, culminates symbolically with the three of them, heading home in the sunshine.

This is a truly remarkable, riveting and courageous work, which adds a new dimension to Hanif Kureishi and his oeuvre.

The reviewer is the author of Hybrid Tapestries: The Development of Pakistani Literature in English

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, November 17th, 2024