Metamorphosis

A Life in Pieces

Author: Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

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For readers of Atul Gawande's Being Mortal and Henry Marsh's Do No Harm, an unforgettably powerful and heartbreaking book about how to liveA darkly comic and moving reflection on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is certain, from the award-winning Oxford professorWe 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

Critic Reviews

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. The Times
A pitch-perfect memoir: stylish, erudite, touchingly honest and darkly funny. -- Jacqueline Wilson, author of The Story of Tracy Beaker
An outstanding feat of bravery and brio... A buoyantly written, piercingly perceptive book. Sunday Times
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. -- Natalie Haynes, author of A Thousand Ships
The writing is all elegance and wit. The Times, 2023's Top 50 Non-Fiction Books

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.