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Hanif Kureishi: ‘I had to write about the theft — it was all that was left to me’


Being robbed of his life savings and falling in love seem to have mellowed author Hanif Kureishi, he tells Katie Law: London Evening Standard

Hanif KureishiIt’s been three years since Hanif Kureishi was robbed of £120,000 by his accountant, Adam Woricker, and he remains traumatised. “It’s as if you’re walking down the street and someone decides to hit you over the head with a hammer,” the author says. “There’s nothing you can do.”

Woricker, “a small, chubby fellow with a high voice” who worked for the “highly respectable” firm of London chartered accountants Fisher Phillips, was sacked, arrested and eventually jailed last July for eight years for forging signatures and stealing £1.6 million.

Kureishi, it turned out, had not been his only victim: Woricker had stolen money from his church, from charities and even the life savings of an old school friend, mostly to impress his Albanian girlfriend.

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