A life of independence and literary renown is irrevocably altered in Shattered: A Memoir by British Pakistani novelist and screenwriter Hanif Kureishi. In a series of reflective, chucklesome, and sometimes brooding "dispatches" from his hospital bed, Kureishi narrates his consequential year of recovery after the Christmas 2022 fall and spinal injury that resulted in tetraplegia.
For Kureishi (The Buddha of Suburbia; The Nothing), a writer known for his irreverent humor and flair for capturing the gritty realities of life, the ability to express himself freely is his most precious asset. Here, readers will find his writerly talents in full bloom even as he must renegotiate all other aspects of his life.
Shattered opens in January 2023 at Rome's Gemelli Hospital. Kureishi was unable to move his limbs and communicated by dictating diary-like entries to his partner, Isabella, and his sons, Sachin, Carlo, and Kier, as they circled in and out of his hospital room. His immobility didn't stop Kureishi from appreciating the more farcical aspects of his medical care, including the time a nurse excitedly mistook him for Salman Rushdie.
Kureishi was not immune to "the rage of helplessness" but it didn't consume him. As he describes cappuccinos with a fellow patient and visits from friends, he recalls Great Britain's multiracial transformation during the 1960s and the influence his father, "a civil servant at the Pakistani Embassy in London," had on his career.
It is Isabella, devoted to and exhausted by his care, to whom Kureishi dedicates this memoir. He has faith they can find "a new way of loving each other." In spite of everything he has lost, Kureishi is determined to write. "It has never mattered to me more," he declares, accepting an astonishing new reality in which "all I have left is speech." --Shahina Piyarali