First published 1999
Richard Selzer draws from three decades as a practicing surgeon to create these stories about people facing medical emergencies and life-altering diagnoses. Doctors struggle with impossible decisions in operating rooms. Patients confront their mortality in hospital beds. Families wait for news that will change everything. Selzer writes from inside these moments of crisis, connecting individual suffering to universal questions about death and survival. His medical background allows him to portray both the clinical details and emotional weight of illness with equal precision. The collection spans his career as a writer, gathering stories from his previous books alongside two new pieces. An introduction reveals how Selzer moved from medicine to literature, finding in writing a way to examine the human dramas he witnessed daily in his surgical practice. These stories transform medical encounters into explorations of what it means to be mortal.
Genres: short-stories, literary-fiction, medical, contemporary
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: life-altering-diagnosis, medical-professionals
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
400 pages · Paperback · Picador
Content warnings: medical-trauma