Sick

In Sick, Khakpour, a novelist and academic, chronicles her journey. It is a story of extreme illness and her fight for a diagnosis; of drugs, prescribed and recreational; of being female and a woman of colour; of feeling like an outsider. It amounts to a fierce work of feminism and an indictment of the healthcare system in America. It is also a haunting and sensational achievement . . . Sick is an intelligent tale of remarkable survival - as soon as you have finished you will want to start again * * Sunday Times * * 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 * * A gripping account of illness . . . This intimate account of suffering has the narrative propulsion of a thriller * * Financial Times * * Arresting . . . Sick upends all the tropes of the illness memoir . . . Khakpour's prose is beautiful, at once silky and scorching, like the curls of smoke rising from a fire that's just starting * * 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 * * The constant change in geography, in lovers, and in health are immensely pleasurable to read on every page, despite the author's uncertain future through it all. The very worst moments . . . are gravid with her joy at being able to write it. In the end, it's this joy of writing, however grim the content, that is really the subject of Sick. I love this book -- Ben Shields * * The Paris Review * * In this chilling memoir, the Iranian-born writer details her struggle with late-stage Lyme disease, drug addiction and mental illness . . . Sick doesn't make for an easy read, but it's definitely worth delving into this beautifully complicated memoir about living life with Lyme * * ELLE * * 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