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The Hindu
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Review of Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
People who love Hanif Kureishi's work as a novelist and screenwriter were in for a rude shock as news of his fall and spinal cord injury in Rome made headlines in 2022. It was horrifying to imagine the enormity of his agony, as he was confined to a hospital bed and forced to take on the identity of a patient. He could no longer 'walk, write or wash himself', and struggled to accept this new reality that made him 'entirely dependent on the goodwill of others', as recounted in his new book Shattered — a profound work of contemplative prose. At the outset, the memoir compels the reader to think about what it means to write, not only as an outlet for creative expression or as a tool for socio-political change but as a physical act. The fall, we are told, resulted in neck hyperextension and immediate tetraplegia, which rendered Kureishi unable to move his limbs, scratch his nose, feed himself or make a phone call. He wondered if he would ever manage to hold a pen, or walk on his own. It began as 'a series of despatches' dictated to his partner, Isabella, and his sons Sachin, Carlo and Kier from hospital beds in Italy and in the U.K., where he now lives. These dictated drafts were revised, expanded and edited in the same collaborative manner with Carlo. Honest look at care The book offers an honest glimpse of how frustrating it can be to ask for and receive support. Kureishi admits, for instance, how impatient he gets with Isabella. 'She is Italian and English is her second language, so she doesn't always get what I say,' he notes. This slows down the process of his dictation and her note-taking. He acknowledges that his condition is a huge drain on her, and he is unsure if he would have been capable of offering the care she does. While this could be a fair evaluation of his own personality, it could be read as an admission of how patriarchy normalises the unequal distribution of care work in intimate relationships. Shattered belongs to the genre of autopathography, which focuses on autobiographical narratives about the experience of illness. It captures the inner life of a person who has nowhere to go and must learn to keep his mind occupied, even distracted, to avoid succumbing to suicidal thoughts. He thinks of himself as a 'vegetable', feels jealous of people who have 'fit bodies', and feels bad for himself because he cannot go back to the life he once enjoyed. In one of these moments, Kureishi writes, 'Will I ever get out of this, will I die here? I think about killing myself by overdosing. It would be a relief.' Leaning on humour Kureishi shows what it is like to feel imprisoned in a space that is meant to help him recover. He speaks on behalf of every person who has felt disempowered by the medical-industrial complex because it treats their body as an object to be inspected rather than respected. Since the food tastes like cardboard, and it is boring to stare at empty walls for hours at a stretch, Kureishi entertains himself by writing about the quirks of nurses and physiotherapists at the hospital. He appreciates their cheerfulness and hard work and feels sorry that they are not paid adequately for their labour. On one occasion, after three physiotherapists walk into his room, he remarks, 'I have become a big admirer of Italian men… Their skin is smooth and it glows. Their sharp dark body hair is inspiring. They are neither macho nor mummy's boys.' It is the author's sense of humour that seems to protect him from losing his bearings during this excruciating period. The humour is often dark and politically incorrect. Kureishi believes that psychiatrists are not good listeners; they are too eager to diagnose and prescribe anti-depressants. About his own psychiatrist, Kureishi writes, 'I've ended up analysing his dreams. Since he was struck by how often he dreams about Donald Trump, I had to inform him of how much he envies Trump's brutality and freedom to do or say whatever occurs to him.' This book makes the reader think about how people with disabilities are expected to be victims, heroes, or grateful beneficiaries of charity rather than complicated, imperfect beings who craft their own unique paths out of the hell they have been thrust into. Kureishi allows himself to whine and admit how 'the sick can dominate a family, sucking out all the oxygen' even as he expresses appreciation for his loved ones. This memoir is the story of his determination 'to keep writing' and draw sustenance from words. In doing so, he has created a book that will give courage to the hopeless and evoke empathy in the cold-hearted. (Assistance for overcoming suicidal thoughts is available on these 24x7 helplines: KIRAN 1800-599-0019, Aasra 9820466726.) The reviewer is a journalist, educator and literary critic. Shattered Hanif Kureishi Hamish Hamilton ₹999
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
A New Kind of ‘Illness Realism'
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Illness and literature have frequently been bedfellows. Tuberculosis, for example, shortened the life and influenced the work of authors as varied as Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka, and the Brontë sisters. We can't know what In Search of Lost Time would have looked like if a variety of ailments had not left Marcel Proust in his bed during his youth. To infer that sickness begets literature would be misleading—perhaps even dangerous. But once in a while, it forces a writer to undergo a radical artistic transformation—one so serious that they might reconsider what books can do. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic's Books section: What Christopher Hitchens understood about the Parthenon The modern voice of war writing A novelist who looks into the dark This week, Hillary Kelly wrote for The Atlantic about a visit with Hanif Kureishi, the award-winning British author who, in 2022, at age 68, began to feel faint and lost consciousness. When he awoke in a hospital, he learned that he had broken his neck, and was paraplegic. Kureishi was already well established before his debilitating injury. In fact, he confessed to Kelly, he believes success had made him too comfortable. 'I was happy having a good life,' he said. 'I thought, Fuck it. Why should I spend all day working? … I didn't have much of a desire to write anymore.' But after his fall, beginning in his first days in the hospital, Kureishi started to write furiously. A flurry of social-media posts earned him sympathy and admiration for his truth-telling. Over two years of immobility and constant care, that intensity has not abated. A new book, Shattered, collects essays from his first year. In defining what's new about the book's 'illness realism,' Kelly draws on Virginia Woolf, another writer who faced serious health challenges. In On Being Ill, Woolf wrote that 'things are said, truths blurted out' on the sickbed 'which the cautious respectability of health conceals.' Kureishi, Kelly writes, conveys these truths unvarnished: 'He has no distance from himself or his condition, and refuses to add any.' Kureishi told Kelly that he hasn't been able to read since his fall; he hasn't even read his own book. Last week in The Atlantic, Kristen Martin wrote about another unusual memoir that presents a very different example of how a health emergency can rewire an author's work. Sarah Chihaya's Bibliophobia is, Martin writes, 'an account of how her reliance on books played a major role in a crisis, leading her, for a time, to fear them.' In 2019, after a lifetime of devoted reading, Chihaya was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, after which she found herself unable to read (or to write the book that would secure her tenure as a Princeton professor). What eventually helped her emerge—and to write this memoir—was a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, which provided 'a new plot for her life, based in reality rather than fiction.' Writing—of a new, almost unbearably honest kind—seemed to have helped both of these authors communicate intensely isolating experiences to readers. For the ill person, Woolf wrote, 'the whole landscape of life lies remote and fair, like the shore seen from a ship far out at sea.' Yet that seascape, too, belongs to life; most readers find themselves there at some point. And an author may teach them how to navigate the tides. Hanif Kureishi's Relentlessly Revealing Memoir By Hillary Kelly How a tragic accident helped the author find his rebellious voice again Read the full article. , by Sarah Viren At first, To Name the Bigger Lie seems like a straightforward coming-of-age story. As a high-school student in 1990s Tampa, Florida, Viren falls under the sway of her charismatic teacher Dr. Whiles, who is intent on pushing his students to question the nature of the truth. His pedagogy involves exposing his class, often uncritically, to conspiracy theories that include Holocaust denialism. Years later, in 2016, Viren sets out to write a book that treats that period in her life as an allegory for the rise of fascism in the United States. But, partway through the writing, her wife—an academic, like Viren—is falsely accused of sexual harassment, and the ensuing Title IX investigation becomes part of Viren's narrative. The surprising convergences that Viren finds between the case and Dr. Whiles's teaching—both of which turn out to be fraught, harmful ways of trying to access the truth—culminate in a chilling interrogation of the fact-finding methods that our institutions rely on. — Tajja Isen From our list: Read these books—just trust us 📚 You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip, by Kelsey McKinney 📚 Loca, by Alejandro Heredia 📚 Blood Ties, by Jo Nesbø The Dictatorship of the Engineer By Franklin Foer Despite this history of failure, Americans haven't shaken the hope that some benevolent, hyperrational leader, immune to the temptations of political power, will step in to redesign the nation, to solve the problems that politicians can't. That hope is unbreakable, because American culture invests engineers with the aura of wizardry. This is true for Elon Musk. For years, the media glorified him as a magician who harnessed the power of the sun, who revived the American space program, who rescued the electric car. Given that hagiographic press, some of it deserved, he could easily believe in his own ability to fix the American government—and think that a large chunk of the nation would believe that, too. Read the full article. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic. Sign up for The Wonder Reader, a Saturday newsletter in which our editors recommend stories to spark your curiosity and fill you with delight. Explore all of our newsletters. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
07-02-2025
- Health
- Atlantic
A New Kind of ‘Illness Realism'
This is an edition of the Books Briefing, our editors' weekly guide to the best in books. Sign up for it here. Illness and literature have frequently been bedfellows. Tuberculosis, for example, shortened the life and influenced the work of authors as varied as Robert Louis Stevenson, Franz Kafka, and the Brontë sisters. We can't know what In Search of Lost Time would have looked like if a variety of ailments had not left Marcel Proust in his bed during his youth. To infer that sickness begets literature would be misleading—perhaps even dangerous. But once in a while, it forces a writer to undergo a radical artistic transformation—one so serious that they might reconsider what books can do. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic 's Books section: This week, Hillary Kelly wrote for The Atlantic about a visit with Hanif Kureishi, the award-winning British author who, in 2022, at age 68, began to feel faint and lost consciousness. When he awoke in a hospital, he learned that he had broken his neck, and was paraplegic. Kureishi was already well established before his debilitating injury. In fact, he confessed to Kelly, he believes success had made him too comfortable. 'I was happy having a good life,' he said. 'I thought, Fuck it. Why should I spend all day working? … I didn't have much of a desire to write anymore.' But after his fall, beginning in his first days in the hospital, Kureishi started to write furiously. A flurry of social-media posts earned him sympathy and admiration for his truth-telling. Over two years of immobility and constant care, that intensity has not abated. A new book, Shattered, collects essays from his first year. In defining what's new about the book's 'illness realism,' Kelly draws on Virginia Woolf, another writer who faced serious health challenges. In On Being Ill, Woolf wrote that 'things are said, truths blurted out' on the sickbed 'which the cautious respectability of health conceals.' Kureishi, Kelly writes, conveys these truths unvarnished: 'He has no distance from himself or his condition, and refuses to add any.' Kureishi told Kelly that he hasn't been able to read since his fall; he hasn't even read his own book. Last week in The Atlantic, Kristen Martin wrote about another unusual memoir that presents a very different example of how a health emergency can rewire an author's work. Sarah Chihaya's Bibliophobia is, Martin writes, 'an account of how her reliance on books played a major role in a crisis, leading her, for a time, to fear them.' In 2019, after a lifetime of devoted reading, Chihaya was hospitalized in a psychiatric ward, after which she found herself unable to read (or to write the book that would secure her tenure as a Princeton professor). What eventually helped her emerge—and to write this memoir—was a diagnosis of major depressive disorder, which provided 'a new plot for her life, based in reality rather than fiction.' Writing—of a new, almost unbearably honest kind—seemed to have helped both of these authors communicate intensely isolating experiences to readers. For the ill person, Woolf wrote, 'the whole landscape of life lies remote and fair, like the shore seen from a ship far out at sea.' Yet that seascape, too, belongs to life; most readers find themselves there at some point. And an author may teach them how to navigate the tides. Hanif Kureishi's Relentlessly Revealing Memoir By Hillary Kelly How a tragic accident helped the author find his rebellious voice again What to Read To Name the Bigger Lie, by Sarah Viren At first, To Name the Bigger Lie seems like a straightforward coming-of-age story. As a high-school student in 1990s Tampa, Florida, Viren falls under the sway of her charismatic teacher Dr. Whiles, who is intent on pushing his students to question the nature of the truth. His pedagogy involves exposing his class, often uncritically, to conspiracy theories that include Holocaust denialism. Years later, in 2016, Viren sets out to write a book that treats that period in her life as an allegory for the rise of fascism in the United States. But, partway through the writing, her wife—an academic, like Viren—is falsely accused of sexual harassment, and the ensuing Title IX investigation becomes part of Viren's narrative. The surprising convergences that Viren finds between the case and Dr. Whiles's teaching—both of which turn out to be fraught, harmful ways of trying to access the truth—culminate in a chilling interrogation of the fact-finding methods that our institutions rely on. — Tajja Isen Out Next Week 📚 You Didn't Hear This From Me: (Mostly) True Notes on Gossip, by Kelsey McKinney 📚 Loca, by Alejandro Heredia 📚 Blood Ties, by Jo Nesbø Your Weekend Read The Dictatorship of the Engineer By Franklin Foer Despite this history of failure, Americans haven't shaken the hope that some benevolent, hyperrational leader, immune to the temptations of political power, will step in to redesign the nation, to solve the problems that politicians can't. That hope is unbreakable, because American culture invests engineers with the aura of wizardry. This is true for Elon Musk. For years, the media glorified him as a magician who harnessed the power of the sun, who revived the American space program, who rescued the electric car. Given that hagiographic press, some of it deserved, he could easily believe in his own ability to fix the American government—and think that a large chunk of the nation would believe that, too. When you buy a book using a link in this newsletter, we receive a commission. Thank you for supporting The Atlantic.
New York Times
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Paralyzed by a Fall, a Writer Learns Resilience (and Kindness)
In December 2022, in Rome, fate took Hanif Kureishi by the wrong hand. He was sitting in the living room of his girlfriend's apartment, watching a soccer game on his iPad. Suddenly he felt dizzy. He leaned forward and blacked out. He woke up several minutes later in a pool of his own blood, his neck awkwardly twisted. Kureishi was 68. He was rendered, instantly, paralyzed below the neck, able to wiggle his toes but unable to scratch an itch, grip a pen or feed himself, let alone walk. Kureishi, who is British Pakistani, is a well-known screenwriter and novelist. His paralysis made international news, and many began to follow his updates on his progress, which he posted via dictation on social media. Now comes a memoir, 'Shattered,' with further updates. The news this book delivers, as regards his physical condition, is not optimistic. He has progressed little. He wrestles mightily with who he is, now that he must rely on others for nearly everything except talking and breathing. His memoir is good but modestly so. It contains a great deal of black comedy but its most impressive emotion is regret — for things undone and unsaid earlier in his life. It's hard to get across how counterculturally famous Kureishi was in the 1980s and '90s. He wrote the screenplay for Stephen Frears's raffish art-house film 'My Beautiful Laundrette' (1985), about a young Pakistani man who is given a derelict laundromat in London by his uncle and hopes to turn it into a success. That movie arrived in the wake of Salman Rushdie's 'Midnight's Children' (1981), the most influential novel of the late 20th century. Both were fresh and sharply drawn works about postcolonialism and its discontents, a topic that Rushdie and Kureishi dragged, alive and squirming, to the forefront of the culture. The men became friends. Kureishi photographed a bit better than Rushdie did. With his lion's mane of dark curls, he resembled a pop star or a hipster prince more than a writerly mole person. Thus, it is one of the jokes in 'Shattered' when Kureishi recalls the time a nurse asked, while plunging a gloved finger into his backside: 'How long did it take you to write 'Midnight's Children'?' He replied that if he'd written 'Midnight's Children,' he would not be in the care of England's public health system. In a darker parallelism, Rushdie too has written a recent memoir of horror and recovery. Kureishi wrote the screenplay for Frears's next movie, the romantic comedy 'Sammy and Rosie Get Laid' (1987), and then published his first and best-known novel, 'The Buddha of Suburbia,' in 1990. He has since written many more screenplays and novels but none have so captured the conversation. When the press began to write about his accident, Kureishi says in 'Shattered,' he began to feel like Huck Finn at his own funeral. Most of the accounts of his life and career were flattering. There is a bit of that life and career in this memoir, but more often we are in the present tense, as in: 'Excuse me for a moment, I must have an enema now.' Bodily eliminations are a central topic. He learns to get over the humiliation of not being able to cope with these on his own. Caregivers always seem to be feeling around back there. At one point Kureishi cries out to his readers, 'I now designate my arse Route 66.' The importance of touch, of small physical kindnesses, is felt in nearly every paragraph. It has ever been true: Kindness is the coin of the realm, accepted everywhere. Looking back at his life, Kureishi writes: 'I wish I had been kinder; and if I get another chance, I will be.' Remorse runs through this memoir's veins like tracer dye. Kureishi stares hard at himself; he studies the blueprint of his own heart; he does not always like what he sees. He recalls being spoiled and self-centered and not, for example, welcoming the arrivals of his three sons. He hated taking them to sports events; he was used to doing what he wanted. While his girlfriend and later wife, Isabella, cares for him in his new state, he wonders if he would have done the same for her. He was often distant, to her and others. His injury has brought him so much good will from so many people; he wonders if he would have reacted similarly. Kureishi comes to feel 'like a Beckettian chattering mouth, all I can do is speak, but I can also listen.' His favorite visitors are big talkers. Speaking takes a lot out of him. He remarks that 'becoming paralyzed is a great way to meet new people.' While he is in rehab, trying to regain motor skills, Kureishi confronts the contingencies of all our lives. Those around him have suffered motorcycle crashes, falls from ladders and trampolines, dives into empty swimming pools, sports injuries, a litany of freak and not-so-freak accidents. Many incapacitated people, including famous ones like Christopher Reeve, have written books. The paralysis memoir with the most sophistication and sensitivity, that constantly taps into life's mother lode, is 'The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' (1997), by Jean-Dominique Bauby. He was 43, the editor of Elle France, when he suffered a brainstem stroke. He wrote his sumptuous book by blinking to select letters while the alphabet was recited to him. 'Shattered' does not reach such heights. We confront the bare wood beneath the bark of Kureishi's best earlier writing. But he is good and bracing company on the page. His book is never boring. He offers frank lessons in resilience, about blowing the sparks that are still visible, about ringing the bells that still can ring.
