Hanif Kureishi to publish memoir about accident that left him paralysed
The novelist and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi will publish a memoir in 2024 about the accident that left him paralysed last year. Shattered will expand on the material The Buddha of Suburbia’s author has been sharing on social media and Substack, which he continues to dictate from an Italian hospital.
On Boxing Day 2022, the author was rushed to intensive care after a fall in Rome. He later tweeted (via dictation to family) that he may never be able to walk or use a pen again. Since then his blogposts The Kureishi Chronicles, published via Substack, and his tweets have shared insights on everything from his health to his recreational drug use. A recent post told of a visit from Kureishi’s schoolfriend David, whom the author revealed he had fancied in his youth. David had pushed the writer around the hospital’s small garden and the pair had enjoyed discussing “anything that came into [their] minds”.
“I need plenty of company at the present time. Being here has become more difficult as I feel more isolated from the general world, and more desperate to escape,” Kureishi said.
All of the author’s previous fulllength works have been published in the UK by Faber. Shattered, however, will be published by Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Random House.
“Like everyone who knows Hanif, I was shocked by the news of his accident and the awful situation in which he suddenly found himself,” said Hamish Hamilton’s publishing director Simon Prosser. “And like thousands of others I was electrified by the words he began sending out into the world in January as Twitter threads, detailing his thoughts, feelings and memories, as they came to him, with extraordinary clarity, force and composure. In them, we hear Hanif’s instantly recognisable voice, reporting from a place which every one of us can imagine and fear.”
“Over the coming months I will be working with Hanif as he shapes these hospital dispatches into a book, and I more than hope – I believe – that the ultimate arc of this book will be one of recuperation,” he added.
“Simon and I have known each other for many years, and it is a pleasure to be working together at last on a book,” Kureishi said.
Earlier this month Kureishi also announced a non-fiction writing competition for his Substack subscribers. Entrants should submit up to 750 words on the subject of “Injury” for the chance to be published on The Kureishi Chronicles along with the author’s comments.