In the Land of Pain

By Alphonse Daudet, Julian Barnes (translator),

Book cover of In the Land of Pain

Book description

A ā€œstartling [and] splendidā€ book (The New York Times Book Review) from one of the greatest writers of the nineteenth century on his years of enduring severe illnessā€”a classic in the literary annals of human suffering. ā€¢ Edited and translated by the bestselling, Booker Prize winning author of The Senseā€¦

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Why read it?

1 author picked In the Land of Pain as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Alphonse Daudetā€™s notebooks on pain are among the most explicit, honest, and consoling treatments of chronic illness ever written. Daudet was a contemporary of Flaubert, admired as a novelist of provincial France by such luminaries as Charles Dickens and Henry James. Like Flaubert, Daudet suffered from syphilis and he planned to write a book about his experience. He died before he could do that, but his notebooks survive. As someone who lives with chronic pain, I cherish Daudetā€™s frank but never saccharine advice and his commitment to compassion for others in the teeth of his own suffering.

From Kieran's list on finding solidarity in suffering.

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