Hanif Kureishi, author of The Buddha of Surburbia and the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of My Beautiful Laundrette, suffered a dangerous fall on December 26, 2022. Ten days later, he recalled the ordeal in a series of tweets. Kureishi tweeted he “began to feel dizzy” after watching a game of football. “I leant 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 wrote describing the next few moments.

The author said he then “became divorced” from himself and his hand felt like an “uncanny object over which I had no agency.” As his conditioned worsened, he believed he way dying and had only “three breaths left.” A death, that according to him would be “miserable and ignoble.” Kureishi’s wife, Isabella d’Amico, heard him shouting and came to his aid. “She saved my life and kept me calm,” Kureishi tweeted.

Kureishi is being treated at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome, where he has been since the fall. He said he is unable to move his arms and legs and described it as being “humiliating, degrading and a burden for others.”

Kureishi also said that he has had an operation on his spine and will begin physiotherapy and rehabilitation as soon as possible. Thanking the hospital staff, he tweeted, “I want to thank the doctors and nurses at the hospital for all their extraordinary kindness, competence and care.”

In a hope to “continue some kind of half life,” the writer asked his followers if any of them could help him with suggestions of any voice-assisted hardware and software that would allow him “to watch, write and begin work again.”