He was known for taboo-busting, transgressive stories about identity, sexuality and belonging. Then the author and screenwriter broke his neck. But he’s still every bit as provocative …

• ‘A bomb went off in my life’: read an exclusive extract from his new memoir here

“I wasn’t even pissed,” Hanif Kureishi says, as if somehow that would have made it better. The writer is talking about the accident that left him a tetraplegic. Or, as he likes to call himself with classic Kureishian brutality, a vegetable. Though he’s not. His body may be broken, but his brain isn’t.

It was Boxing Day 2022 and he was in Italy. Back then the writer spent half his idyllic life in Rome, half in London. His three sons were adult and independent, he had enough money to enjoy a good life, he was in love with his wife, Isabella d’Amico, and, at the age of 68, the enfant terrible of English literature was content in a way he’d never been. He was having a beer, watching the football on his iPad, when he had a dizzy spell. He stood up, took a few steps forwards and fainted. He later discovered he had fallen on his head and broken his neck. Kureishi was left paralysed.