The Undying: A Meditation on Modern Illness

(Paperback)

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Blending memoir with critique, the Pulitzer Prize-winning exploration of sickness and health, cancer and the cancer industry, in the modern world 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.

Reviews

Anne Boyer is an essential voice, and this is an essential book: one body's urgent attempt at finding a language to tell us what it knows -- Jonathan Lethem, author of The Feral Detective
This is a powerful, timely, and troubling book. Boyer's unflinching account of the market-driven brutality of American cancer care sits beside some of the most perceptive and beautiful writing about illness and pain that I have ever read -- Hari Kunzru, author of White Tears

Author Bio

Anne Boyer is a U.S. poet and essayist. In 2018 she was the inaugural winner of the Cy Twombly Award for Poetry and the recipient of a Whiting Award in non-fiction/poetry. Her books include A Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018) as well as several volumes of poetry, including The Romance of Happy Workers (2008) and the CLMP Firecracker Award-winning Garments Against Women (2016). She was the Judith E. Wilson Fellow at Cambridge University for 2018-2019. She lives is Kansas City, Missouri.