The Undying

When Anne Boyer was diagnosed with a highly aggressive form of cancer as a single mother at the age of 41, she found herself plunged into a world in which real bodies are transformed into data points on screens, where hoaxes and misinformation are everywhere, where the criticisms and encouragements visited upon the ill can be as wrong-headed as each other - and where the importance of the art, literature and friendships that persist in the face of suffering was thrown into stark relief. Her investigation of the quackeries, casualties and ecological costs of cancer became an exploration of illness, from the present day back to the insurrectionary lepers and dream diarists of the ancient world; and her exploration of illness in turn grew into 'a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself' (Sally Rooney). Furious, courageous, endlessly surprising and deeply humane, The Undying is an Illness as Metaphor for the 21st century: a truly brilliant thinker and writer's acclaimed meditation on cancer, the cancer industry, friendship, community and the sicknesses and glories of contemporary life.