ONE of Britain’s best known authors has been shortlisted for a national writing prize for a story that takes a blackly comic approach to the execution of hostages in Iraq.

Weddings and Beheadings by Hanif Kureishi — writer of My Beautiful Laundrette and The Buddha of Suburbia — tells the story of a jobbing cameraman in Baghdad who films executions to earn a living and jokes about it as a way to cope.

The author had the idea for the work, shortlisted for the National Short Story Prize, after seeing grainy video footage on the television news of the scenes leading up to beheadings. This led to him imagining the life of the man behind the camera.

“The idea started with a joke,” said Kureishi, 52. “I thought, what if you were a cameraman, having to do these kind of jobs and you had a business card that said ‘Weddings and Beheadings’? I thought it was hilarious and told my children about it, but they just stared at me blankly.”

He added: “Seeing the footage, I started to think what about that wobbly camera — what is the story of that bloke trembling behind the camera? You’re only going to get one take, you know, would be the line.”

Kureishi said he saw the person doing the filming not as a terrorist but as an innocent roped in for his ability to use a video camera, “like any young guy, living in Camden wanting to make movies, except that he happens to be in Baghdad”.

Kureishi denied his story was disrespectful to victims and their families. “Very black comedy can be a way to look at these things,” he said. “We have to have some way of looking at awful things in the world.”

The BBC is due to broadcast the story this week on Radio 4.

But Alex Linklater, associate editor of Prospect magazine, founder of the prize, said the BBC may alter this plan, particularly while the whereabouts of Alan Johnston, its abducted Gaza correspondent, are still unknown.

“As with all fiction where there are close parallels to real news, it’s a question of sensitivity,” said Linklater.

The sensitivity may be increased by the fact that British hostages in addition to Iraqis and others have had their murders by insurgents filmed.

In 2004, Margaret Hassan, an aid worker, was shot and Kenneth Bigley, an engineer, was beheaded. Footage of both executions was posted on the internet.

The winner of the short story prize, which is worth £15,000, will be announced on April 23. “You can’t write anything these days without getting a prize,” quipped Kureishi. “Can you imagine, £15,000 for a short story? They’re usually published for £75 or £200.”

The author did not say which killings he had been watching when he had the idea for his short story, but he described his protagonist as “someone driven slowly mad. I started to think about how if you filmed these things, then in your mind you would see them over and over again”.

The characters develop black humour partly as a way to cope with the horror of their work. In one scene, the cameraman jokes to a friend: “Don’t bury your head in the sand, my friend. Don’t go losing your head now, chin up”.

Philip Tew, professor of English at Brunel university and expert on 20th century fiction, described the story as “as an effective piece of writing” but added: “I find it hard to believe terrorists would use anyone outside their orbit to film beheadings.”

Kureishi was unrepentant about his shock tactics. “I’d like to be more extreme, not less,” he said. “I didn’t think about whether people would be shocked.”

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