‘I have to find a way to survive’: My Beautiful Laundrette writer Hanif Kureishi, 68, reveals ‘despair’ at still being in hospital in Rome – six weeks after Boxing Day fall left him ‘face to face with death’

• Mr Kureishi fell at apartment in Rome on Boxing Day and woke in pool of blood
• The Buddha of Suburbia told Twitter fans he was still in hospital six weeks on  
• Read more: Top Gear horror crash details revealed: Andrew ‘Freddie’ Flintoff was seriously hurt while filming BBC show when his open-topped car flipped

Author Hanif Kureishi has revealed he’s still in hospital a month and a half after a devastating fall on Boxing Day, saying he feels like he’s been ‘plucked off the street by four anonymous policemen and been taken to a strange school’. 

The British playwright, novelist and filmmaker, 68, who is best known for The Buddha Of Suburbia, Intimacy and My Beautiful Launderette, fell during a walk while staying at his apartment in Rome, leaving him partially paralyzed. 

It’s believed he’s still being treated at a clinic in Rome, and in a lengthy thread on Twitter yesterday, he told his followers that he despaired at not being able to ‘step into my old life’.

He said he was struggling to come to terms with the fact ‘I can’t walk up the front path of my house, open the door, and step back into my old life – lie down on my sofa, with a glass of wine and the Premier League. It seems unbelievably cruel that I cannot do such a simple thing.’

Explaining he was receiving good care, he said the hospital staff treating him are ‘kind’ but that it was hard to accept his current situation, writing: ‘I had my accident on Boxing Day. What’s that – about a month and a half ago? This is a fact that is unbearable, a stone so hard and round, I can’t swallow it or spit it out.’

The British playwright, novelist and filmmaker, 68, told his followers on Twitter that he has been told he can’t yet leave the Rome hospital where he’s been for six weeks after he was left in a ‘pool of blood’ while out walking in the Italian capital (Pictured in Rome in 2017)

He described being in hospital as if ‘I have been plucked off the street by four anonymous policemen and been taken to a strange school, an irrational persecutory alternate universe. I have to find a way to survive, like we all did when we were children.’  

Mr Kureishi 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: ‘I had just seen Mo Salah score against Aston Villa, sipped half a beer, when I began to feel dizzy.’

Awaking in a pool of blood,  with his neck in a ‘grotesquely twisted position’, he was left unable to use his arms and legs. 

He told BBC Radio 4 this week that the accident left him ‘face to face’ with death. He said: ‘I was quite healthy for most of my life before this. I had one or two illnesses here and there and I considered myself healthy. 

‘Now, when I sit outside in the garden here I see people walking around, I can’t believe they’re walking around. I want to say to them ‘”don’t you know it’s amazing you can walk around, you can use your arms and legs”.’

Last month, Mr Kureishi said his partner, Isabella d’Amico, 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.’

He continued: ‘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.’

Mr Kureishi is known for tackling difficult subjects including the complexity of relationships and the marginalisation of minority groups.

Author of The Buddha of Suburbia Hanif Kureishi (pictured), 68, is still in hospital and is unable to move his arms or legs following the fall on Boxing Day

Works: My Beautiful Laundrette, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, was released in 1985. Right: The Buddha of Suburbia television series from 1995 starring (pictured left to right) Naveen Andrews, Roshan Seth and Susan Fleetwood

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.

Mr Kureishi’s other screenplays include Sammy And Rosie Get Laid, London Kills Me, The Mother and Venus.

In 1990, Mr 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.

British playwright novelist and filmmaker, Hanif Kureishi is best known for The Buddha Of Suburbia (pictured), Intimacy and Mother

Mr Kureishi (pictured) is known for tackling difficult subjects including the complexity of relationships and the marginalisation of minority groups

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.

The book is semi-autobiographical and draws on a number of Mr Kureishi’s own experiences growing up in London.

Mr Kureishi’s second novel, The Black Album, was published in 1995 and deals with Islamic fundamentalism and freedom of speech, and was adapted for the stage in 2009.

His third novel, Intimacy, came in 1998 and follows the story of a man contemplating leaving his wife and children after feeling rejected by his wife.

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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