This is a memoir by French bestselling and award-winning author and
musician Mathias Malzieu. It focuses on a single year in which he
explores his close encounter with death. Insightful, tragic and even
often very funny, it is a hugely inspirational read.
In November 2013 Malzieu is diagnosed with a rare and life-threatening
blood disease: his bone marrow does not produce enough blood cells, and
those that survive are being attacked by the body's natural antibodies
as if they were viruses. Highly anaemic and at risk of a cardiac attack
or fatal haemorrhaging, Malzieu is whisked into hospital, and spends
months in a sterile isolation room. He is kept alive by blood
transfusions, while waiting for a bone marrow transplant. When he has
the energy for it, he writes in his diary and strums his ukelele.
To read this book is to be in awe of the triumph of the human spirit. As
a reader you find yourself marvelling at how we find the mechanisms to
cope with tragedy and uncertainty when faced with the reality that we
may die. Malzieu's highly active imagination allows him to transcend the
limits of his body and its increasing failures through fantasy and
escapism. His wonderfully addictive childish wonder with a punk Gothic
twist lifts the narrative from being a depressing account to a reading
experience that is evocative, poetic and intensely moving.
Malzieu survived thanks to a revolutionary operation involving stem-cell
treatment with the blood from an umbilical cord. As he leaves the
hospital with not only a different blood group but also a different DNA,
he describes himself as the oldest newborn in the world. As Malzieu says
himself, 'To have had my life saved has been the most extraordinary
adventure I have ever had.'
