Skip to content
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL DOMESTIC ORDERS $35+
FREE SHIPPING ON ALL US ORDERS $35+
A History of Present Illness - Paperback | Diverse Reads

A History of Present Illness

Availability:
in stock, ready to be shipped
$17.99 - $17.99
$17.99
$17.99
$17.99 - $17.99
$17.99
2023 Rosenthal Family Foundation Award, American Academy of Arts and Letters •  A Lit Hub Most Anticipated Book of 2022 •  A Publishers Weekly “Writer to Watch”

“A revelation.” –The New York Times
"Brutal and brave, DeForest's novel is one of the best in the ‘making of a doctor’ genre. And its plucky protagonist, casualty and hero, roars a universal truth, ‘We all hurt.’” ―Booklist, starred review 
 

A young woman puts on a white coat for her first day as a student doctor. So begins this powerful debut, which follows our unnamed narrator through cadaver dissection, surgical rotation, difficult births, sudden deaths, and a budding relationship with a seminarian.
 
In the troubled world of the hospital, where the language of blood tests and organ systems so often hides the heart of the matter, she works her way from one bed to another, from a man dying of substance use and tuberculosis, to a child in pain crisis, to a young woman, fading from confusion to aphasia to death. The long hours and heartrending work begin to blur the lines between her new life as a physician and the lifelong traumas she has fled.   

In brilliant, wry, and biting prose, A History of Present Illness is a boldly honest meditation on the body, the hope of healing in the face of total loss, and what it means to be alive.

ISBN-13: 9780316381161

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Back Bay Books

Publication Date: 04-02-2024

Pages: 176

Anna DeForest is a neurologist and palliative care physician in New York City. Her writing has appeared in the Alaska Quarterly Review, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Paris Review. This is her first novel.