The body and seven stories - Hanif Kureishi

The centrepiece of Hanif Kureishi's brilliant collection of fiction is a novella that delves into the fascinating concept of personal identity, and the extent to which this is rooted in our physical being. The Body is the narrative of middle-aged playwright Adam, who is amazed to be offered the chance to trade in his decrepit flesh for a much younger and more pleasing model. He elects to take up this offer for a limited six-month period, as a vacation from corporeal reality, whereupon he will return to his old life. His brain is duly extracted and transplanted, his consciousness transposed, and his youth restored. He then embarks on an odyssey of physical hedonism, and winds up as a handyman on a Greek island commune where spiritual and physical harmony are vigorously pursued. But in this seeming idyll, the responsibilities Adam thought he had sloughed off now begin to come home to him. Sinister forces are pursuing him, wanting to take possession of 'his' body, and he is loath to relinquish it . . .