In Gratitude

Fiction & Literature, Essays & Letters, Essays, Biography & Memoir, Literary
Cover of the book In Gratitude by Jenny Diski, Bloomsbury Publishing
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Jenny Diski ISBN: 9781632866882
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Publication: May 17, 2016
Imprint: Bloomsbury USA Language: English
Author: Jenny Diski
ISBN: 9781632866882
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication: May 17, 2016
Imprint: Bloomsbury USA
Language: English

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Transcendently disobedient, the most existence-affirming and iconoclastic defense a writer could mount against her own extinction." --Heidi Julavits, New York Times Book Review

From "one of the great anomalies of contemporary literature" (The New York Times Magazine) comes a breathtaking memoir about terminal cancer and the author's relationship with Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing.

In July 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given "two or three years" to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, as if she were acting out her part. To find the response that felt wholly her own, she had to face the clichés and try to write about it. And there was another story to write, one she had not yet told: that of being taken in at age fifteen by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent fifty years of their complex relationship.

In the pages of the London Review of Books, to which Diski contributed for the last quarter century, she unraveled her history with Lessing: the fairy-tale rescue as a teenager, the difficulties of being absorbed into an unfamiliar family, the modeling of a literary life. Swooping from one memory to the next--alighting on the hysterical battlefield of her parental home, her expulsion from school, the drug-taking twenty-something in and out of psychiatric hospitals--and telling all through the lens of living with terminal cancer, through what she knows will be her final months, Diski paints a portrait of two extraordinary writers--Lessing and herself.

From a wholly original thinker comes a book like no other: a cerebral, witty, dazzlingly candid masterpiece about an uneasy relationship; about memory and writing, ingratitude and anger; about living with illness and facing death.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year

"Transcendently disobedient, the most existence-affirming and iconoclastic defense a writer could mount against her own extinction." --Heidi Julavits, New York Times Book Review

From "one of the great anomalies of contemporary literature" (The New York Times Magazine) comes a breathtaking memoir about terminal cancer and the author's relationship with Nobel Prize winner Doris Lessing.

In July 2014, Jenny Diski was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer and given "two or three years" to live. She didn't know how to react. All responses felt scripted, as if she were acting out her part. To find the response that felt wholly her own, she had to face the clichés and try to write about it. And there was another story to write, one she had not yet told: that of being taken in at age fifteen by the author Doris Lessing, and the subsequent fifty years of their complex relationship.

In the pages of the London Review of Books, to which Diski contributed for the last quarter century, she unraveled her history with Lessing: the fairy-tale rescue as a teenager, the difficulties of being absorbed into an unfamiliar family, the modeling of a literary life. Swooping from one memory to the next--alighting on the hysterical battlefield of her parental home, her expulsion from school, the drug-taking twenty-something in and out of psychiatric hospitals--and telling all through the lens of living with terminal cancer, through what she knows will be her final months, Diski paints a portrait of two extraordinary writers--Lessing and herself.

From a wholly original thinker comes a book like no other: a cerebral, witty, dazzlingly candid masterpiece about an uneasy relationship; about memory and writing, ingratitude and anger; about living with illness and facing death.

More books from Bloomsbury Publishing

Cover of the book The War in Cambodia 1970–75 by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Date Him or Dump Him? The Dance Dilemma by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Inside South Africa’s Foreign Policy by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book The Secrets of Wishtide by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Commensality: From Everyday Food to Feast by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Frostgrave: Oathgold by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Shakespeare and His Authors by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Jason and the Argonauts by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book The Future of the International Labour Organization in the Global Economy by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book The Wrong Side of the Sky by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Nowhere Girl by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book The Diners Out Handbook by Jenny Diski
Cover of the book Scripture: A Guide for the Perplexed by Jenny Diski
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy