What Hanif Kureishi learned from being robbed by his accountant

Have you ever met a sane accountant? I ask, because one of the more striking sentences in A Theft runs: ‘Long before this, though, and long before I learned that the insane, these days, might disguise themselves as money experts, I had heard that no one had met a sane accountant.’ To which an accountant might reply: ‘I have never met a sane writer. ‘(I am certainly in no position to wag the finger when it comes to this.)

Hanif Kureishi, though, has cause for his observation, and his grievance. In the spring of 2012, his accountant, whom he calls here Jeff Chandler, managed to con him out of around £180,000. This booklet is his reaction to that.

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It starts out very promisingly. As Kureishi says: ‘Most proper writers would rather be at what I call the “Genet” end of the scale, with the criminals, thieves, and “bedlam boys”, than situate themselves within the farce and falsity of respectability.’