Undying front cover

Undying


Regular price$32.71
/
Shipping calculated at checkout.
  • Lifetime warranty
  • Free shipping on orders $59.99+ USD
  • In stock, ready to ship

Note: This item is made to order. Shipping for this item may be delayed.

WINNER OF THE 2020 PULITZER PRIZE IN GENERAL NONFICTION

"The Undying is a startling, urgent intervention in our discourses about sickness and health, art and science, language and literature, and mortality and death. In dissecting what she terms 'the ideological regime of cancer,' Anne Boyer has produced a profound and unforgettable document on the experience of life itself." ―Sally Rooney, author of Normal People

"Anne Boyer’s radically unsentimental account of cancer and the 'carcinogenosphere' obliterates cliche. By demonstrating how her utterly specific experience is also irreducibly social, she opens up new spaces for thinking and feeling together. The Undying is an outraged, beautiful, and brilliant work of embodied critique." ―Ben Lerner, author of The Topeka School

A week after her forty-first birthday, the acclaimed poet Anne Boyer was diagnosed with highly aggressive triple-negative breast cancer. For a single mother living paycheck to paycheck who had always been the caregiver rather than the one needing care, the catastrophic illness was both a crisis and an initiation into new ideas about mortality and the gendered politics of illness.

A twenty-first-century Illness as Metaphor, as well as a harrowing memoir of survival, The Undying explores the experience of illness as mediated by digital screens, weaving in ancient Roman dream diarists, cancer hoaxers and fetishists, cancer vloggers, corporate lies, John Donne, pro-pain ”dolorists,” the ecological costs of chemotherapy, and the many little murders of capitalism. It excoriates the pharmaceutical industry and the bland hypocrisies of ”pink ribbon culture” while also diving into the long literary line of women writing about their own illnesses and ongoing deaths: Audre Lorde, Kathy Acker, Susan Sontag, and others.

A genre-bending memoir in the tradition of The Argonauts, The Undying will break your heart, make you angry enough to spit, and show you contemporary America as a thing both desperately ill and occasionally, perversely glorious.

Includes black-and-white illustrations

Shipping is free for all orders shipped within the United States for orders $59.99 and over. All other orders have a nominal fee of $4.99 unless customers choose faster delivery via for $9.99.

Orders are processed Monday-Friday in the order that they are received.

Customer Reviews

Be the first to write a review
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)
0%
(0)

You may also like

Standard
Lifetime Warranty

At Lay it Flat, we are committed to providing you with nothing but the best. We want you to be completely satisfied with your purchase. That's why all Lay it Flat books come standard with a lifetime warranty.

Locally manufactured

Made in North Carolina

We've always believed in the power of small businesses. The quality of craftmanship and care that exceeds our customers' desires is what makes Lay it Flat our mission in life.

About Us
Enjoy
An Upgrade That Lasts

Forget the inconveniences you're used to. Our books relieve the hassle of traditional bindings and are guaranteed to last over twice as long.