Between Two Kingdoms
A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

Kategorie: Bücher
Seiten / Format: 368 S
Erscheinungsjahr: 2022
Verlag: Penguin Random HouseRandom House Trade Paperbacks
Sprache: Englisch
ISBN: 9780399588600

Here is the key to Between Two KingdomsJaouad s disarming honesty. There is no self-pity in this telling and few of the expected pieties . . . Jaouad is writing about a process, a back-and-forth. In the tension between health and sickness, past and present, a new balance must be forged.Los Angeles Times<br><br>Jaouad s book stands out not only because she has lived to parse the saga of her medical battle with the benefit of hindsight, but also because it encompasses the less familiar tale of what it s like to survive and have to figure out how to live again.NPR<br> <br>I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. Her sensory snapshots remain in my mind long after reading . . . Not only can Jaouad tolerate the unbearable feelings, she can reshape them into poetry . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review<br> <br>Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us, not only readers who ve faced a life-changing and potentially life-ending diagnosis. . . . The timing of this memoir is just right.The Washington Post<br><br>When the life we had is snatched away, how do we find the conviction to live another? Between Two Kingdoms will resonate with anyone who is living a different life than they planned to live. This is a propulsive, soulful story of mourning and gratitude and an intimate portrait of one woman s sojourn in the wilderness between life and death.Tara Westover, author of Educated<br><br>A beautiful, elegant, and heartbreaking book that provides a glimpse into the kingdom of illness . . . Suleika Jaouad avoids sentimentality but manages to convey the depth of the emotional turmoil that illness can bring into our lives.Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies<br><br>In a book bubbling with ambition and impeccable skill, it is what Suleika Jaouad does with courage and secondary characters that is simply once in a generation. Between Two Kingdoms mended parts I thought were forever disintegrated.Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy<br><br>"This is a deeply moving and passionate work of art, quite unlike anything I ve ever read. I will remember these stories for years to come, because Suleika Jaouad has imprinted them on my heart.Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love<br><br>Jaouad does a beautiful job of writing from this place of dual citizenship, where she finds pain but also joy, kinship, and possibility.Library Journal (starred review)<br> <br>Memorable, lyrical, and ultimately hopeful: a book that speaks intently to anyone who suffers from illness and loss.Kirkus Reviews<br> <br>Boldly candid and truly memorable.Booklist (starred review)<br> <br>This is a stunning memoir, well-crafted and hard to put down.Publishers Weekly (starred review)<br>1<br><br>The Itch<br><br>It began with an itch. Not a metaphorical itch to travel the world or some quarter-­life crisis, but a literal, physical itch. A maddening, claw-­at-­your-­skin, keep-­you-­up-­at-­night itch that surfaced during my senior year of college, first on the tops of my feet and then moving up my calves and thighs. I tried to resist scratching, but the itch was relentless, spreading across the surface of my skin like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Without realizing what I was doing, my hand began meandering down my legs, my nails raking my jeans in search of relief, before burrowing under the hem to sink directly into flesh. I itched during my part-­time job at the campus film lab. I itched under the big wooden desk of my library carrel. I itched while dancing with friends on the beer-­slicked floors of basement taprooms. I itched while I slept. A scree of oozing nicks, thick scabs, and fresh scars soon marred my legs as if they had been beaten with rose thistles. Bloody harbingers of a mounting struggle taking place inside of me.<br><br>It might be a parasite you picked up while studying abroad, a Chinese herbalist told me before sending me off with foul-­smelling supplements and bitter teas. A nurse at the college health center thought it might be eczema and recommended a cream. A general practitioner surmised that it was stress related and gave me samples of an antianxiety medication. But no one seemed to know for sure, so I tried not to make a big deal out of it. I hoped it would clear up on its own.<br><br>Every morning, I would crack the door of my dorm room, scan the hall, and sprint in my towel to the communal bathroom before anyone could see my limbs. I washed my skin with a wet cloth, watching the crimson streaks swirl down the shower drain. I slathered myself in drugstore potions made of witch hazel tonic and I plugged my nose as I drank the bitter tea concoctions. Once the weather turned too warm to wear jeans every day, I invested in a collection of opaque black tights. I purchased dark-­colored sheets to mask the rusty stains. And when I had sex, I had sex with the lights off.<br><br>Along with the itch came the naps. The naps that lasted two, then four, then six hours. No amount of sleep seemed to appease my body. I began dozing through orchestra rehearsals and job interviews, deadlines and dinner, only to wake up feeling even more depleted. I ve never felt so tired in my life, I confessed to my friends one day, as we were walking to class. Me too, me too, they commiserated. Everyone was tired. We d witnessed more sunrises in the last semester than we had in our entire lives, a combination of logging long hours at the library to finish our senior theses followed by boozy parties that raged until dawn. I lived at the heart of the Princeton campus, on the top floor of a Gothic-­style dorm, crested with turrets and grimacing gargoyles. At the end of yet another late night, my friends would congregate in my room for one last nightcap. My room had big cathedral windows and we liked to sit on the sills with our legs dangling over the edge, watching as drunken revelers stumbled home and the first amber rays streaked the stone-­paved courtyard. Graduation was on the horizon, and we were determined to savor these final weeks together before we all scattered, even if that meant pushing our bodies to their limits.<br><br>And yet, I worried my fatigue was different.<br><br>Alone in my bed, after everyone had gone, I sensed a feasting taking place under my skin, something wending its way through my arteries, gnawing at my sanity. As my energy evaporated and the itch intensified, I told myself it was because the parasite s appetite was growing. But deep down, I doubted there ever was a parasite. I began to wonder if the real problem was me.<br><br>In the months that followedNEW YORK TIMESBESTSELLER A deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into normal life from the founder of The Isolation Journals and a subject of the Netflix documentaryAmerican Symphony<br><br>ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist<br><br>I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown. Chanel Miller,The New York Times Book Review<br> <br>Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.The Washington Post<br><br>In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter the real world. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.<br><br>It started with an itch first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column forThe New York Times.<br><br>When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal to survive. And now that she d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.<br><br>How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back andforth between these realms throughout our lives.Between Two Kingdomsis a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.4USSuleika Jaouadwrote the Emmy Award winningNew York Timescolumn Life, Interrupted. Her essays and feature stories have appeared inThe New York Times MagazineandVogueand on NPR. She is also the creator of the Isolation Journals, a global project cultivating creativity and community during challenging times.Between Two Kingdomsis her first book.

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