Sick: A Memoir

BuzzFeed’s 33 Most Exciting New BooksBustle’s 28 Most Anticipated Non-fiction Books of 2018Nylon’s 50 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018Huffington Post’s 60 Books We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018Electric Literature’s 46 Books to Read By Women of Colour in 2018For as long as Porochista Khakpour can remember, she has been sick. For most of that time, she didn’t know why. A story of survival, pain and transformation, Sick examines the colossal impact of illness on one woman’s life. It is a journey that took Porochista Khakpour from Tehran, the town of her birth, through the major cities of America, the country she came to call home, before she eventually found a diagnosis of late-stage Lyme disease.Sick explores what it means to feel at home in one’s body, and also one’s country. And what it means not to.

Reviews of Sick: A Memoir

Reads like a mystery and a reckoning with a love song at its core . . . Khakpour takes us all the way in on her struggle towards health with an intelligence and intimacy that moved, informed, and astonished me — CHERYL STRAYED Draws attention to the ways in which women are expected to tell stories of sickness * * The New Yorker * * Arresting . . . Sick upends all the tropes of the illness memoir * * Slate * * Khakpour is a citizen of the world but a foreigner in her own "Lyme-struck" body. Her searing memoir about trying to make peace with a chronic illness redefines both dislocation and belonging * * Oprah Magazine * * Written with bravery and honesty, Sick is an account of chronic illness, drug addictions, pain both physical and emotional, and the toll of misdiagnosis — BuzzFeed This book gives a voice – a fierce, booming, brutally honest voice – to the millions of people silently suffering with invisible illnesses of their own . . . Thank you, thank you, thank you, Porochista for giving so much of yourself in this miraculous memoir. The world is a better place with your book in it — SUSANNAH CAHALAN, author of BRAIN ON FIRE Absolutely essential . . . Beautifully written, thought-provoking and illuminating * * Nylon * * Vibrant, humming, strong, tall, striding . . . Survival can be an act of the imagination: it is the courage to insist on seeing yourself decades in the future, climbing a mountain, squinting into the sun, sitting down at the desk to write what happened — PATRICIA LOCKWOOD, author of PRIESTDADDY In this unrelenting memoir, Khakpour examines the brutality the world delivers upon our bodies while offering glimpses of hope amid life's uncertainties * * Esquire * * By sharing her body story, Porochista Khakpour gives the reader a profoundly generous gift: an unflinching narrative of the deep desire to live. Sick is a triumph of the imagination as she holds her heart out to you — LIDIA YUKNAVITCH, author of THE BOOK OF JOAN