Description

Brought to you by Penguin

We all have trapdoors in our lives Sometimes we jump off just in time we defuse an argument with a joke we swerve to prevent a traffic accident But sometimes we are unlucky enough to be on the trapdoor when the lever is pulled My own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist

When the trapdoor opened for Robert DouglasFairhurst 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 Its an ode to great writing to storytelling to science and to the power of the imagination And above all its a darkly comic and moving reflection on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is certain

Robert DouglasFairhurst 2023 P Penguin Audio 2023