Hanif Kureishi shared an update as he receives care in hospital (Picture: Roberto Ricciuti/Getty Images)
Author and playwright Hanif Kureishi has revealed the devastating consequences of a fall on Boxing Day, which landed him in hospital.
He is currently being cared for by medical staff in Rome, and has shared that he’s unable to move his arms or legs.
The 68-year-old British playwright, novelist and filmmaker – best known for his works The Buddha Of Suburbia, Intimacy and Mother – shared a message with his followers, in which he said he was being treated at Gemelli University Hospital in the Italian capital.
Kureishi said he was in the city on December 26 when he fell during a walk from Piazza del Popolo to Villa Borghese and then back to his apartment.
He said in the Twitter post: ‘I had just seen Mo Salah score against Aston Villa, sipped half a beer, when I began to feel dizzy.
‘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.’
The writer fell on Boxing Day, and is now unsure whether he will walk again (Picture: Barbara Zanon/Getty Images)
Kureishi said he saw ‘a scooped, semi-circular object with talons attached scuttling towards me’ before realising it was his hand.
He added: ‘It occurred to me then that 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.’
Kureishi said his wife heard his ‘frantic shouting’, adding: ‘She saved my life and kept me calm.
‘For a few days I was profoundly traumatised, altered and unrecognisable to myself. I am in the hospital. I cannot move move my arms and legs.’
He said he cannot scratch his nose, make a phone call, or feed himself.
‘As you can imagine, this is both humiliating, degrading and a burden for others,’ he admitted.
Kureishi is recovering after an operation on his spine, and he has shown ‘minor improvements’ over the last few days.
The writer said he has ‘sensation and some movement’ and will soon begin physiotherapy and rehabilitation.
He added that, at the moment, it is ‘unclear whether I will ever be able to walk again, or whether I’ll ever be able to hold a pen.’
‘If there is any assistance that I would be grateful for, it would be with regard to voice assisted hardware and software, which will allow me to watch, write -and begin work again, and continue some kind of half life,’ he said in the emotional update.
He was left ‘traumatised’ after the frightening incident (Picture: PA)
The author is known for tackling difficult subjects including the complexity of relationships and the marginalisation of minority groups.
In 1985 he was commissioned by Channel 4 to write a play, which resulted in My Beautiful Laundrette, a film about a gay British Pakistani youth in 1980s London.
The film, directed by Stephen Frears, won the New York City Film Critics best screenplay award and received an Academy Award nomination for best original screenplay.
Kureishi’s other screenplays include Sammy And Rosie Get Laid, London Kills Me, The Mother and Venus.
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In 1990, Kureishi published one of his most famous works, The Buddha Of Suburbia, which won the Whitbread Award for the best first novel and was later adapted for a BBC television series with a soundtrack by David Bowie.
The novel follows a bisexual British South Asian character called Karim Amir as he explores class, ethnicity, sexuality and culture in late 20th-century London, drawing on a number of Kureishi’s own experiences growing up in the capital.
He was made a CBE in 2008 and sold his archive to the British Library in 2014, which included personal diaries and notebooks, and also the working material for his major works.
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He said it’s been ‘humiliating, degrading and a burden for others.’
