By the time of his death, Herve Guibert had become a singular literary
voice on the impact of AIDS in France. He was prolific. His oeuvre
contained some twenty novels, including To the Friend Who Did Not Save
My Life and The Compassion Protocol. He was thirty-six years old. In
Cytomegalovirus, Guibert offers an autobiographical narrative of the
everyday moments of his hospitalization because of complications of
AIDS. Cytomegalovirus is spare, biting, and anguished. Guibert writes
through the minutiae of living and of death--as a quality of invention,
of melancholy, of small victories in the face of greater threats--at the
moment when his sight (and life) is eclipsed.
This new edition includes an Introduction and Afterword contextualizing
Guibert's work within the history of the AIDS pandemic, its relevance in
the contemporary moment, and the importance of understanding the
quotidian aspects of terminal illness.