★ 2024-11-21
After the fall.
In 2022, Kureishi, then 68, collapsed at his partner’s apartment in Italy, partially breaking his neck and suffering spinal nerve damage and resulting tetraplegia, a near-complete paralysis of his hands, arms, and legs. Dictating verbal diary entries to his partner, Isabella, from his hospital bed in Italy, then in West London, the celebrated British Pakistani playwright (My Beautiful Laundrette,The Buddha of Suburbia) details his struggle to heal and thrive despite immense pain, frustration, and a missing sense of time, as well as the toll this crushing ordeal would have on his relationship with Isabella: “We will have to find a new way of loving each other,” he admits. Enhancing these provocative entries are the author’s ruminations and pointed perspectives on his life, career, family, childhood, sex, Isabella (whom he proposes to while incapacitated), and his friendship with Salman Rushdie, “one of the bravest men I know.” He also considers the fascist nature of Italian government and how it affects the precarious lives of young queer and nonbinary individuals. Psychologically processing his life-altering condition is one thing, but Kureishi must also contend with his arduous, agonizing, and helpless physical condition and the ensuing rehabilitation suddenly thrust upon him. Yet despite feeling “battered and broken,” the ever-resilient author manages to inject levity and revelatory catharsis into his daunting “new reality.” He contemplates how becoming paralyzed affords him the opportunity to meet and empathize with new people, and he ponders the possibilities of somehow achieving some type of modified sexual pleasure again. The memoir is also cautionary for readers who mistakenly believe they are blessed with hardship immunity: “There isn’t a family on the planet that will evade catastrophe or disaster.” Kureishi harrowingly reminds us that it takes just one fall to upend an entire lifetime, forever.
Refashioning his life after an accident—with grace, dignity, and black humor.
A literary tour de force. . . . Shattered covers the full gamut, leaving us even still wanting more.” — San Francisco Chronicle
“Shattered, a bare, tumultuous memoir of the first year of Kureishi’s new life. . . [is] simultaneously the story of his mind’s entrapment in his body and his attempt to outrun that restriction with radical transparency. . . . Shattered is akin to a war diary, prizing immediacy above all else.”
— Atlantic
“A candid and frequently affecting account . . . . Mr. Kureishi’s road may never lead to a full physical recovery, but he continues to face his rehabilitation with courage and compassion.” — Wall Street Journal
“Offer[s] an unflinching look at Kureishi’s affliction. . . . Amid the monotony of hospital routines and physiotherapy sessions, writing becomes Kureishi’s anchor: ‘I am determined to keep writing, it has never mattered to me more.’”
— New Yorker ("Briefly Noted")
“Gripping . . . . Shattered is most jarring and captivating when it takes us into the alternate reality of the hospital, where time slows to nearly a standstill and odd rites replace familiar ones. . . . Art should ‘frighten, if not alarm.’ I am glad this book does.” — Washington Post
"[Kureishi] 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." — New York Times
"An awe-inspiring, soul-searing piece of writing, and painfully essential reading." — Nigella Lawson
“Hanif Kureishi has long been one of the most exciting, irreverent, influential voices of his generation. In this beautiful, moving memoir he deals with personal calamity with wit, unflinching honesty and literary grace. It’s an extraordinary achievement.” — Salman Rushdie
"Very moving and often funny . . . There are two surprising things about [Shattered]: the first is that there's no self-pity or self-regard, even if there's a Lear-like fury with the injustice of fate; the second is that it's a love story – love of his partner, his ex-wife, his three sons, his late father and his many friends. "I will make something of this,” he says of his experiences. And, with the help of those who love him, he's achieved something altogether remarkable." — Richard Eyre
“Much is shattered in this remarkable, unsentimental account of a devastating fall, but some things remain perfectly intact. Hanif's humor, talent, curiosity, clarity, and perversity – all are present and correct. I loved it.” — Zadie Smith
“Powerful, harrowing, and utterly absorbing. It will change the way you connect with life—and love.” — Elif Shafak
“The ever-resilient author manages to inject levity and revelatory catharsis into his daunting ‘new reality.’ . . . Kureishi harrowingly reminds us that it takes just one fall to upend an entire lifetime, forever. [He] refashion[s] his life after an accident—with grace, dignity, and black humor.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“An admirable account of an arduous journey traversing a dreadful injury, metamorphosis, healing, and acceptance.” — Booklist
“Extraordinary, unique, and unputdownable . . . an exceptional volume as original as Jean-Dominique Bauby’s stroke classic The Diving Bell and the Butterfly [and] as profound and affected as Salman Rushdie’s Knife . . . This fall provoked a rare, and inspiring, defiance . . . Shattered, with its unique authorship, has become a life-saver. For the reader, this compounds the intensity of its witness.” — Independent (UK)
“A thoroughly compelling, and deeply harrowing, account of Kureishi’s life . . . few could write about it with the piercing candor and clarity that Kureishi has done. There is frustration, anger, sometimes despair, but not a trace of self-pity.” — Daily Telegraph (UK)
“Raw and earnest . . . Kureishi’s fans will find Shattered wildly inspiring; his singular voice, his bawdy humor, his efforts to create meaning, all so characteristic and moving . . . I can’t wait to read everything he has to write.” — Guardian (UK)
“An enthralling report on how a person can be forced to reckon with sudden, shocking change . . . Shattered is its own lifeline, and a neat exemplar of what we mean when we describe a book as ‘necessary’: its value for readers is at one with its urgency of expression to the human being drowning in the experience it attempts to redeem . . . It’s impossible not to read Shattered in a spirit of generosity and communion.” — Observer, “Book of the Day” (UK)
“Darkly funny . . . . Kureishi . . . relates with bracing candor the indignities and psychological anguish associated with the sudden loss of personal autonomy.” — Irish Times
“Shattered is bracingly candid, frequently funny but harrowing too.” — The Sunday Times (UK)
“You’d think a book about a paralyzed man lying in hospital for a year would be bound to be depressing. It never is. Hanif Kureishi is such an exhilarating writer. . . . I’ve never felt tempted to use the word ‘inspirational’ about a book, and promise I never will again, but it’s the only word I can think of to describe Shattered.” — The Spectator (UK)
