Author may not write again
The celebrated British novelist and screenwriter
Hanif Kureishi said Friday that he does not have control over his limbs and may not be able to hold a pen again after a debilitating fall Dec. 26 in Rome.
The 68-year-old Oscarnominated screenwriter of “My Beautiful Launderette” described believing he had come close to death after feeling dizzy while watching a soccer game and sipping beer.
Minutes later, he woke up, “in a pool of blood” and fearing that he had just “three breaths left,” he wrote. Kureishi was attended to by his partner,
Isabella d’Amico, who he said saved his life.
The author was treated at Gemelli hospital in Rome, where he underwent spinal surgery. He said that there have since been minor improvements in his condition, though “I cannot scratch my nose, make a phone call or feed myself. As you can imagine, this is both humiliating, degrading and a burden for others.”
The son of a Pakistani migrant and an English woman, Kureishi grew up in the suburbs of London. He has been a writer for more than three decades and is best known for his work on immigrants and race in a post-colonial Britain transforming into a multicultural society.
Kureishi shot to fame with the screenplay for “My Beautiful Launderette,” a 1980s social comedy featuring a gay British Pakistani man that was a critique of Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher’s policies.
The film, which also starred Daniel Day-Lewis, was nominated for a screenwriting Academy Award.
The writer asked his followers for leads on voice-assisted technology as “it is unclear whether I will ever be able to walk again, or whether I’ll ever be able to hold a pen.”