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Pathemata

Or, The Story of My Mouth

Maggie Nelson

$26.99

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English
Vintage
14 May 2026
A profound and deeply personal exploration of pain, the body and loss by the beloved author of Bluets and The Argonauts

It's not the dream that matters, it's the telling of the dream - the words you choose, the risks you take in externalising your mind

This is a dreamlike portrait of a body in struggle to connect with itself and others. As the narrator contends with chronic pain, and with a pandemic raging in the background, she sets out to examine the literal and symbolic role of the mouth in the life of a writer.

Merging dreams and dailies, Pathemata recounts the narrator's tragicomic search to alleviate her suffering, a search that eventually becomes a reckoning with various forms of loss - the loss of intimacy, the loss of her father and the loss of a pivotal friend and mentor. In exacting, distilled prose, her account blurs the lines between embodied, unconscious and everyday life.
By:  
Imprint:   Vintage
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 197mm,  Width: 130mm,  Spine: 7mm
Weight:   68g
ISBN:   9781529951363
ISBN 10:   1529951364
Pages:   80
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  ELT Advanced ,  Primary
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Maggie Nelson is the author of several books of prose and poetry including The Red Parts, Bluets, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winner The Argonauts, On Freedom, Like Love and, most recently, Pathemata. She teaches at the University of Southern California and lives in Los Angeles.

Reviews for Pathemata: Or, The Story of My Mouth

'Among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation' -- Olivia Laing ‘One of the most unique voices in non-fiction: enquiring, political, lyrically dazzling, empathetic’ -- Sinéad Gleeson ‘Always brilliant’ -- Geoff Dyer ‘Her words come as though from a great distance and strike incredibly close’ -- Anne Enright ‘Maggie Nelson shows us what it means to be real, offering a way of thinking that is as challenging as it is liberating’ -- Eula Biss ‘Maggie Nelson who writes with such passion, clarity, explicitness, fluidity, playfulness and generosity that she redefines what thinking can do today’ -- Wayne Koestenbaum In Pathemata, Nelson somehow manages to write with perfect emotional pitch: its melancholia balanced with humour, its moments of grief and pain tempered by joy. Full of warmth, wisdom and weirdness, it is bound to become a classic. I adored it -- Jenny Mustard


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