Congratulations! Even more people will know your story and get to know how you've dealt with what happened, and is still happening.
Besides your talent for writing, what keeps me reading this is your absolute honesty...in a culture of sentimentality, you write about what's not pretty as well as what's beautiful.
Hanif! I’m so excited for your new work! (And I’m not just reflexively using exclamation points bc this is online). I pre-ordered the book in the US, so I’m not sure when I’m getting my copy. Btw I’m working through your “big” biography, and I’m delighted by how granular the reporting is, reminding me of your plays and essays during Thatcher. (I’m also not a complete sycophant — I promise — just truly enjoying your irreverent wisdom in our insane world.)
I am looking forward to receiving my copy of this book. Your posts over the last year have taught me patience with regard to my own health problems: how not to despair, how to deal with frustration, how to appreciate the things that go right in my life. Your family are champions.
Very inspiring––all of it, and now--to right today, and maybe letting the weight of the book lean your way and get a thrill that me and other lucky souls have also experienced. Thanks for that delicious reminder, and congratulations!
Congratulations to you and your family Hanif, I will spread the word out here and hope it becomes a massive best seller. There is a whole world of people whose lives have been turned upside down who will identity and thirst to read this book, I’m sure. Including me and quite a few people I know. Meanwhile good luck to your penis too!! 😬
Yesterday morning I walked along Charing Cross Road, in London. I don't visit the capital much anymore and, as time flies, less and less of it is familiar to me. I manage to get lost in places that I used to know well.
I passed a temporary Art of Banksy exhibit whose existence, in my opinion, is an exercise in undermining the potency and the message of the art, by removing it from context. I recalled a time before the parade of tired-looking chain stores, when the east side of the road was the haunt of booksellers – independent second-hand dealers along with a few big chains – Blackwells and Books Etc. The latter occupied a unit that was eventually taken over by Borders. Across the road, Foyles, still endures but has moved into a neighbouring premises. I don't like the layout of the new shop as much, which is eccentric but absent the charm of the original. There used to be a branch of Waterstones a few doors along.
I have books in my library (an extensive collection of cardboard boxes that I am in the process of reinforcing, decorating, and lidding) that evoke a Proustian rush whenever I pick them up. I can remember where I bought them and under what circumstances. I could take you now to the basement of Foyles (in its original location), to an alcove in the corner where the nature guides were shelved. To the left, by my elbow, where I crouched down, there were books about sharks. I once travelled to London with the sole intent of purchasing from Foyles, The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, back when the store still organised fiction by publisher rather than by author. Fortunately, hardback sci-fi was exempt from this obtuse shelving policy. Perhaps 20 feet to the left in a long, odd-shaped annex that tapered off into a storage area, I held in my hands, a Black Sparrow Press edition of Bitches Ride Alone by Laura Chester, but for some reason I didn't buy it. A man my age has to learn to live with certain regrets.
It has taken me almost a lifetime to fully realise the importance of friends as people who are aware of and acknowledge my existence, and who will talk to me and listen to my nonsense. An hour or so after I turned left at the original Folyes building, into Manette Street, passing the boarded-off ruin of the Borderline Club in Orange Yard, then under the rectangular arch of The Pillars of Hercules pub, I met-up with a couple of old friends.
Historically men have always been disposable; born to be manoeuvred by generals into the path of a cavalry charge, or engulfed by some grand construction project or large scale exercise in empire building. We three are of an age where we are particularly superfluous to the present needs of society and probably more vulnerable than we would care to accept. We talk about our problems in passing, framing them not as complaints but rather as things that happened. Some of our concerns share common ground. H was recently invited to stay with a male cousin in Vienna, only to be asked by his host, at the eleventh hour, which side of the bed he wanted to sleep on. Throughout the day, both of us try to convince B that his overly affectionate Greek friend, who recently took him to see an incredibly gay movie, might be hitting on him. B is at Loggerheads with the sandwich chain, Pret A Manger, after he swiped his card on a charity donation terminal thinking that he was paying for his food.
“Just dispute the charge with your bank.”
“I don't want to take the money back from the charity. I want Pret A Manger to pay me back for misleading me. The payment machines are right next to each other."
He contents himself in the knowledge that his complaint has probably cost the chain more than £5 in admin.
We settle down in a Wetherspoons, a stone's throw from Elephant & Castle. A working class clientele; cheap beer and food, but good quality. Laminated signs on the bar correct recent stories about the pub chain that have appeared in the national press. Again the conversation flows. An acquaintance of H recently experienced a trio of sexual threesomes in a single day. Was it a ritual – a seventh son of a seventh son deal with arcane powers? No, it's a sadder story than you would think; a tale of an emotionally-wounded man. We discuss the parameters that would need to be set if there was to be a world record for the number of threesomes in an allotted span of time. How do you define a threesome? The problem appears simple until you get down into the weeds and clauses. Then there's lots of 'i's to dot and 't's to cross. B gets out his laptop and thereafter splits his time between coding and taking thoughtful mouthfuls of Newcastle Brown Ale. His company recently outsourced most of its IT. The new staff are sloppy and cut corners. The software he is writing will encourage better practice. It is likely that his job will be outsourced as well. I worry about him. He is successful, but he has a lot of overheads.
Ambling around the perimeter of the Tower of London, whose dry moat has been allowed to grow wild, H tells us about the six months that he spent living in Dakar, which sounds like hell on earth.
At another Wetherspoons, roughly half a mile a way from the first, with a completely different, moneyed clientele and eye-watering prices to match, B fills us in on a friend who recently received a forty grand pay rise. He plans to invest some of his new fortune in gold, which he believes alien civilisations use as a building material to create energy-generating devices that harvest the light of nearby stars. Does he plan to sell the gold to passing aliens? What will they provide in exchange?
“We're laughing at him now. We'll probably all have egg on our faces in a few years,” says H.
Today I am tired. I should have rested, but I soldiered on. I doubt that I will see or speak to anyone for the next few days. Social interaction exhausts me but I recognise the need for it. There is no adequate word that I know of that describes the love that I have for my friends. It's not showy; it may not even be deep, but it's important. I know that.
Congratulations Team Kureishi. Mighty work.
Congratulations! Even more people will know your story and get to know how you've dealt with what happened, and is still happening.
Besides your talent for writing, what keeps me reading this is your absolute honesty...in a culture of sentimentality, you write about what's not pretty as well as what's beautiful.
Hanif! I’m so excited for your new work! (And I’m not just reflexively using exclamation points bc this is online). I pre-ordered the book in the US, so I’m not sure when I’m getting my copy. Btw I’m working through your “big” biography, and I’m delighted by how granular the reporting is, reminding me of your plays and essays during Thatcher. (I’m also not a complete sycophant — I promise — just truly enjoying your irreverent wisdom in our insane world.)
I just checked Amazon -- looks like the U.S. pub date is Feb 4, 2025.
Congratulations, I have been reading your newsletters since you first began and it’s very exciting to see this!
The ending is so moving, Mr. Kureishi. I can't wait to read the book and I hope that the operation will go well.
Congrats Hanif I don't know if I've said this before but I'll get my library to buy. Note to others: They do act on our recommendations.
Great piece Hanif. And you are lucky to have such friends. Can’t wait to read the book. Love Nige
Incredible accomplishment. My eyes welled with tears reading the last sentence….. you and yours inspire me.
Will we be able to read the memoirs in Spanish? hug
Yes !
Congratulations. I broke my neck 40 years ago, and only now starting to write about it.
Subscribed
We your loyal readers applaud you in a thundering round of applause! "not far enough" but mightily far. Congratulations, Hanif!
I am looking forward to receiving my copy of this book. Your posts over the last year have taught me patience with regard to my own health problems: how not to despair, how to deal with frustration, how to appreciate the things that go right in my life. Your family are champions.
Very inspiring––all of it, and now--to right today, and maybe letting the weight of the book lean your way and get a thrill that me and other lucky souls have also experienced. Thanks for that delicious reminder, and congratulations!
So you are a fan as well! Hanif has helped me enormously in ways I can't reproduce. Seconds. A sentence. An aside. A gripe.
Same
Congratulations to you and your family Hanif, I will spread the word out here and hope it becomes a massive best seller. There is a whole world of people whose lives have been turned upside down who will identity and thirst to read this book, I’m sure. Including me and quite a few people I know. Meanwhile good luck to your penis too!! 😬
👍💛👍
Yesterday morning I walked along Charing Cross Road, in London. I don't visit the capital much anymore and, as time flies, less and less of it is familiar to me. I manage to get lost in places that I used to know well.
I passed a temporary Art of Banksy exhibit whose existence, in my opinion, is an exercise in undermining the potency and the message of the art, by removing it from context. I recalled a time before the parade of tired-looking chain stores, when the east side of the road was the haunt of booksellers – independent second-hand dealers along with a few big chains – Blackwells and Books Etc. The latter occupied a unit that was eventually taken over by Borders. Across the road, Foyles, still endures but has moved into a neighbouring premises. I don't like the layout of the new shop as much, which is eccentric but absent the charm of the original. There used to be a branch of Waterstones a few doors along.
I have books in my library (an extensive collection of cardboard boxes that I am in the process of reinforcing, decorating, and lidding) that evoke a Proustian rush whenever I pick them up. I can remember where I bought them and under what circumstances. I could take you now to the basement of Foyles (in its original location), to an alcove in the corner where the nature guides were shelved. To the left, by my elbow, where I crouched down, there were books about sharks. I once travelled to London with the sole intent of purchasing from Foyles, The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, back when the store still organised fiction by publisher rather than by author. Fortunately, hardback sci-fi was exempt from this obtuse shelving policy. Perhaps 20 feet to the left in a long, odd-shaped annex that tapered off into a storage area, I held in my hands, a Black Sparrow Press edition of Bitches Ride Alone by Laura Chester, but for some reason I didn't buy it. A man my age has to learn to live with certain regrets.
It has taken me almost a lifetime to fully realise the importance of friends as people who are aware of and acknowledge my existence, and who will talk to me and listen to my nonsense. An hour or so after I turned left at the original Folyes building, into Manette Street, passing the boarded-off ruin of the Borderline Club in Orange Yard, then under the rectangular arch of The Pillars of Hercules pub, I met-up with a couple of old friends.
Historically men have always been disposable; born to be manoeuvred by generals into the path of a cavalry charge, or engulfed by some grand construction project or large scale exercise in empire building. We three are of an age where we are particularly superfluous to the present needs of society and probably more vulnerable than we would care to accept. We talk about our problems in passing, framing them not as complaints but rather as things that happened. Some of our concerns share common ground. H was recently invited to stay with a male cousin in Vienna, only to be asked by his host, at the eleventh hour, which side of the bed he wanted to sleep on. Throughout the day, both of us try to convince B that his overly affectionate Greek friend, who recently took him to see an incredibly gay movie, might be hitting on him. B is at Loggerheads with the sandwich chain, Pret A Manger, after he swiped his card on a charity donation terminal thinking that he was paying for his food.
“Just dispute the charge with your bank.”
“I don't want to take the money back from the charity. I want Pret A Manger to pay me back for misleading me. The payment machines are right next to each other."
He contents himself in the knowledge that his complaint has probably cost the chain more than £5 in admin.
We settle down in a Wetherspoons, a stone's throw from Elephant & Castle. A working class clientele; cheap beer and food, but good quality. Laminated signs on the bar correct recent stories about the pub chain that have appeared in the national press. Again the conversation flows. An acquaintance of H recently experienced a trio of sexual threesomes in a single day. Was it a ritual – a seventh son of a seventh son deal with arcane powers? No, it's a sadder story than you would think; a tale of an emotionally-wounded man. We discuss the parameters that would need to be set if there was to be a world record for the number of threesomes in an allotted span of time. How do you define a threesome? The problem appears simple until you get down into the weeds and clauses. Then there's lots of 'i's to dot and 't's to cross. B gets out his laptop and thereafter splits his time between coding and taking thoughtful mouthfuls of Newcastle Brown Ale. His company recently outsourced most of its IT. The new staff are sloppy and cut corners. The software he is writing will encourage better practice. It is likely that his job will be outsourced as well. I worry about him. He is successful, but he has a lot of overheads.
Ambling around the perimeter of the Tower of London, whose dry moat has been allowed to grow wild, H tells us about the six months that he spent living in Dakar, which sounds like hell on earth.
At another Wetherspoons, roughly half a mile a way from the first, with a completely different, moneyed clientele and eye-watering prices to match, B fills us in on a friend who recently received a forty grand pay rise. He plans to invest some of his new fortune in gold, which he believes alien civilisations use as a building material to create energy-generating devices that harvest the light of nearby stars. Does he plan to sell the gold to passing aliens? What will they provide in exchange?
“We're laughing at him now. We'll probably all have egg on our faces in a few years,” says H.
Today I am tired. I should have rested, but I soldiered on. I doubt that I will see or speak to anyone for the next few days. Social interaction exhausts me but I recognise the need for it. There is no adequate word that I know of that describes the love that I have for my friends. It's not showy; it may not even be deep, but it's important. I know that.
Thank you for transforming your suffering into art! What a feat! Celebrate the moment!