Shattered: Hanif Kureishi's 'inspirational' memoir of accident that left him paralysed

"You'd think that a book about a paralysed man lying in hospital for a year would be bound to be boring," said Lynn Barber in The Spectator. But this memoir "never is". Hanif Kureishi is "such an exhilarating writer that you read agog even when he's describing having his nappies changed or fingers stuck up his bottom".

The story begins on Boxing Day in 2022, when the novelist, then 68, was watching TV in his girlfriend Isabella's flat in Rome. After becoming dizzy, he put his head between his legs and fell off the sofa – and in doing so partially broke his neck. As a result, he's now tetraplegic: though he has some feeling in his limbs, he "cannot feed himself... or hold a pen".

Fortunately, he can still talk, and that's how he wrote "Shattered": the book is composed of diary entries dictated to his son Carlo, which he began days after the accident "to stop myself from dying inside". Interspersing his experiences of hospital with reminiscences of his childhood and youth, it is gripping and at times unbearably moving. I've never called any book "inspirational" before, but in this case it's the "only word I can think of".

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Kureishi has always been the most "unsparing" of writers, and he doesn't shy away from detailing the gulf between his former life and his new status as what he calls a "near vegetable", said James Walton in The Daily Telegraph. As he reminds us, "he was quite a guy in his prime": a pleasure-seeker whose novels were "shot through with a commitment to following the libido wherever it leads". While part of him is bitterly aware that such pleasures are "gone for ever", another part can't believe he'll never get them back.

For all the misery he describes, "Kureishi remains concerned with showing his readers a good time", said Rob Doyle in The Observer. "I have to say that becoming paralysed is a great way to meet new people," he quips. And while "able-bodied" sex is now beyond him, he wonders if he may eventually "be capable of a little light cunnilingus".

Given its origins as a "survival diary", it's not surprising that this book has a somewhat "scattered" quality, said Dina Nayeri in The Guardian. Many of the ideas it contains "beg for a more careful working out". And yet it's undeniably affecting to see the "agony of becoming a burden" turn Kureishi into a softer, more considerate person. He discovers "new empathy" for those around him, a "renewed interest in others". Written in Kureishi's "singular voice", Shattered is a brave attempt to "create meaning" from a personal catastrophe of the very worst kind.