Hanif & Carlo Kureishi: Are You With Me Now?

Join Hanif Kureishi and his son Carlo Kureishi in conversation with broadcaster Emma Barret.

The song ‘Are You with Me Now?’ was a regular soundtrack to the drives Hanif Kureishi and partner Isabella d’Amico would take from Rome to her mother’s house on the Amalfi Coast, both of them singing along as they skirted the Bay of Naples, in the time before the accident which paralysed him.

This book takes its title from that music – and it is a question that has now become more urgent and more complex. Beginning with this memory of the past and ending with his marriage and his first faltering steps, Hanif Kureishi, with son Carlo, charts how a writer, a couple and a family adapt to disability – through arguments and jokes, memories of lovers and friends, and a new way of working word by word at the kitchen table.

Are You With Me Now? is a fiercely funny, unflinching account of survival – and of creativity, desire and companionship persisting when the body, and conventional life, fall apart.

Hanif Kureishi’s novels include The Buddha of Suburbia, which won the Whitbread Prize for Best First Novel, The Black Album, Intimacy and The Last Word. His screenplays include My Beautiful Laundrette, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. He has been awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and his work has been translated into 36 languages.

Presented in association with the Service95 Book Club.

Founded by Dua Lipa, the Service95 Book Club is a space to enjoy all things literary, including Dua’s hand-picked Monthly Reads and her exclusive author interviews, plus new book trends, recommendations from the Service95 team and more ways for you to read the world differently.