It's impossible to read Shattered, Hanif Kureishi's raw, unvarnished account of his life as a tetraplegic, without coming to an intimate understanding of the workings of his body. Enemas in his backside — the British author calls his arse "Route 66" — catheters in his penis, butt plugs inserted during hydrotherapy, the fingers of strangers in every nook and cranny, washing him, cleaning him, excavating him. Chapters start with sentences like, "shit and piss".
A cherished independence swiftly replaced with myriad indignities. "How did I go from being a private man," he asks, "to a public piece of meat?" It's a shocking story. On December 26, 2022, at the age of 68, Kureishi toppled from his chair whilst watching football at his partner's apartment in Rome.
He fell flat on his face and broke his neck. It immediately felt as though his head had disconnected from his body. He came to in a pool of blood, watching his hand, a "scooped, semi-circular object with talons scuttling towards me".
The bestselling British author reflects on his portrait of race, sex and class in London in the 70s, The Buddha of Suburbia. Kureishi had smoked half a joint, drank half a beer, and was recovering from diverticulitis, but it was a random stroke of bad luck; an odd angle, a tilt, a flat fall, and permanent paralysis. As he began to wrestle, and rage, against what had happened to his body whilst in an Italian hospital, Kureishi felt a burning urge to write about what was happening to him.
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