The author and playwright Hanif Kureishi has said that he may not be able to walk or write again after suffering a fall in Italy just after Christmas.
Kureishi, 68, best known for the film My Beautiful Laundrette for which he was nominated for an Oscar in 1986, was in a Rome apartment with his wife when he was taken ill on Boxing Day.
He has since had a spinal operation at the Gemelli hospital in the Italian capital, after which he has shown some minor improvements but says that he cannot move his arms or legs. The Kent-born writer, who was appointed CBE in 2008, said yesterday that it was unclear whether he would ever be able to walk again or even hold a pen.
Kureishi did not specify what illness he suffered but described waking up in a pool of blood after watching a football match on television.
In posts from his Twitter account, Kureishi said: “I had just seen Mo Salah score against Aston Villa, sipped half a beer, when I began to feel dizzy.
Advertisement
“I lent forward and put my head between my legs; I woke up a few minutes later in a pool of blood, my neck in a grotesquely twisted position, my wife on her knees beside me.”
He said he thought he was going to die after realising that he did not recognise his own hand coming towards him over which he had no control.
“It occurred to me then there was no co-ordination between what was left of my mind and what remained of my body. I had become divorced from myself. I believed I was dying. I believed I had three breaths left.” He said his wife saved his life by keeping him calm before he was taken to hospital, where he remains. He added that for a few days he was “profoundly traumatised, altered and unrecognisable to myself”.
Describing his current state, he said: “I cannot move my arms and legs. I cannot scratch my nose, make a phone call or feed myself. As you can imagine, this is both humiliating, degrading and a burden for others.”
Kureishi said that he would undergo physiotherapy and thanked staff at the Gemelli hospital. He told his Twitter followers he would be grateful if they had any suggestions for voice-assisted hardware and software.
Advertisement
Kureishi has also been recognised for his literary work, and won the Whitbread Award for best first novel in 1990 with his book The Buddha of Suburbia.
