Metamorphosis: A Life in Pieces

For readers of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, an unforgettably powerful and heartbreaking book about how to live A darkly comic and moving reflection on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is certain, from the award-winning Oxford professor We all have trapdoors in our lives. Sometimes we jump off just in time ... But sometimes we are unlucky. My own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist. When the trapdoor opened for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a world of MRI scans, a disobedient body and the crushing unpredictability of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. But, like Alice tumbling into Wonderland, his fall did something else. It took him deep into his own mind- his hopes, his fears, his loves and losses, and the books that would sustain, inform and nourish him as his life began to transform in ways he could never have imagined. From Kafka to Barbellion, this is a literary map of the journey from the kingdom of the well to the land of the sick, and forwards into a hopeful future. It's an ode to great writing, to storytelling, to science and to the power of the imagination. 'A pitch-perfect memoir- stylish, erudite, touchingly honest and darkly funny' Jacqueline Wilson

About the Author :
Franz Kafka (1883-1924) was born into a Jewish family in Prague. In 1906 he received a doctorate in jurisprudence, and for many years he worked a tedious job as a civil service lawyer investigating claims at the State Worker's Accident Insurance Institute. He never married, and published only a few slim volumes of stories during his lifetime. Meditation, a collection of sketches, appeared in 1912; The Stoker- A Fragment in 1913; Metamorphosis in 1915; The Judgement in 1916; In the Penal Colony in 1919; and A Country Doctor in 1920. The great novels were not published until after his death from tuberculosis- America, The Trial and The Castle.

Review :
Metamorphosis is the best book I have read about multiple sclerosis, and that is because it is about so much more... It is simply a beautiful piece of writing. A pitch-perfect memoir: stylish, erudite, touchingly honest and darkly funny. An outstanding feat of bravery and brio... A buoyantly written, piercingly perceptive book. A beautiful and devastating portrayal of a life-changing diagnosis... It is what the best writing should be: a book that will stay with you for life. The writing is all elegance and wit. An account of living with multiple sclerosis that is both deeply literary and painfully honest as it charts his journey into ill health. Heartening and unexpectedly gripping... An immensely powerful book... It persuasively builds the case for the ability of stories to offer hope and solace; to help us become ourselves, over and over, even in extremis. Written by an entertaining storyteller and offers a rare insight into a situation that few people will have to face, but that it does us good to contemplate. While this book deals with distress, physical pain and uncertainty, its wry humour and lightness of touch make it anything but a misery memoir... Superb. Douglas-Fairhurst has written a memoir that is not miserable. It's funny and raw... Magical: pages speed by, fuelled by the author's formidable intellect.