Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves
FROM THE INTERNATIONALLY BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF WHAT I LOVED AND A WOMAN LOOKING AT MEN LOOKING AT WOMEN
'Provocative but often funny, encyclopedic but down to earth . . . an extraordinary double story' Oliver Sacks
'It is Hustvedt's gift to write with exemplary clarity of what is by necessity unclear' Hilary Mantel, Guardian
While speaking at a memorial event for her father, the novelist Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. Was it triggered by nerves, emotion - or something else entirely?
In this profoundly thought-provoking and revealing book, Hustvedt takes the reader on her journey through psychiatry, philosophy, neuroscience and medical history in search of a diagnosis. Conveying the often frightening mysteries of illness, she illuminates the perennially mysterious connection between mind and body and what we mean by 'I'.
'She has an enviable ability to digest and reframe her discoveries into clear, accessible prose' Sunday Telegraph
PRAISE FOR SIRI HUSTVEDT:
'Hustvedt is that rare artist, a writer of high intelligence, profound sensuality and a less easily definable capacity for which the only word I can find is wisdom' Salman Rushdie
'It is Hustvedt's gift to write with exemplary clarity of what is by necessity unclear' Hilary Mantel
'Her novels have received a deserved acclaim. But to my mind, she is even more to be admired as an essayist . . . in this regard I feel that she resembles Virginia Woolf ' Observer
'Few contemporary writers are as satisfying and stimulating to read as Siri Hustvedt' Washington Post
Siri Hustvedt is the author of seven novels including the international bestseller What I Loved, The Blazing World, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction, and Memories of the Future, as well as five collections of essays: Yonder, Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, A Plea for Eros, Living, Thinking, Looking and A Woman Looking at Men Looking at Women. She has also published a poetry collection, Reading To You, and the memoir The Shaking Woman or A History of My Nerves.
Hustvedt has won the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities and the European Essay Prize for her essay The Delusions of Certainty. She is a Lecturer in Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College and has written on art for the New York Times and the Daily Telegraph. Born in Minnesota, Siri Hustvedt lives in Brooklyn, New York.