杏吧原创

Maylis de Kerangal

MacLehose Press

听Thomas Remige runs an organ donation unit. On the back of his office door is taped a line from a play he has never read: 鈥淏ury the dead and mend the living.鈥� Found in a newspaper left lying around in a laundromat, it is 鈥渢he golden ticket in the chocolate bar鈥� of his life. This novel recounts, beat by beat over 24 hours, a heart transplant in the unit. Everyone involved, from the medical staff to the dying donor and his family, has some equally precarious hold on the world, cementing it with whatever they have to hand. If asked, they might call it 鈥渋nterest鈥�, or 鈥渢raining鈥�, or 鈥渢echnique鈥�, or 鈥渟kill鈥�, or 鈥減rotocol鈥�. The reader will see it for what it really is: courage.

Ed Yong

The Bodley Head

听In an over-sanitised world, it can feel disgusting to see ourselves as a zoo. Yet that is what we are, existing in fabulous symbiosis with trillions of microbes, fellow travellers from birth to death. And despite the germ model of Louis Pasteur, the microbial majority neither harms nor benefits us. Ed Yong explains all in a confident debut, its title drawn from Walt Whitman鈥檚 poem Song of Myself (but as Yong writes, it鈥檚 not so much 鈥淚 contain multitudes and more that I am multitudes鈥�). Through his lively narrative, we discover the microbiome, that giant interconnected microbial web which shapes all living creatures in myriad ways. Among the research Yong details is work that may prove key in understanding autism. When pregnant mice were injected with a substance that triggers an immune response rather as a viral infection would, their offspring grew into anxious, easy-to-startle adults with repetitive behaviours. When the adults were fed a particular gut bacterium, however, some of this was reversed. Recent work on injecting gut microbes from kids with autism into mice had the rodents exhibiting the same repetitive behaviours. What we can draw from this is uncertain right now, but it鈥檚 all part of Yong鈥檚 鈥済rander view of life鈥�.

Paul Kalanithi

The Bodley Head

听A neurosurgeon with terminal lung cancer writes here about his own dying 鈥� and one of the oddest discoveries he shares is the fact that after his diagnosis, he has to live an entirely different life. Who knew that a massively truncated future would inflate to such intimidating proportions? You鈥檙e finished, so who can you be in the time you have left? Kalanithi鈥檚 own answer is contained in this essential book.

David France

Picador

听鈥淩are Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals鈥� ran a headline in The New York Times of 3 July 1981. The image of it in David France鈥檚 insider book on AIDS, death and the fightback conjures the blissful ignorance of the time. The ensuing loss of innocence makes for an emotionally exhausting read. Researchers checking stored blood from 1982 found 42.6 per cent of gay men in San Francisco and 26.8 per cent in New York already carried the virus. Millions lived in fear. Yet somehow, through many false dawns, scientists and activists battled (sometimes each other) to find treatments. By 2013, the global death toll was as high as 40 million. By 2015, a similar number were living with HIV. A heartbreaking tale, brilliantly told.

Sarah Moss

Granta

听鈥淭here are no premonitions,鈥� observes the father of a 15-year-old girl who, for a while, and for no earthly reason, has stopped breathing. 鈥淭he fact that you are eating a barely acceptable sandwich鈥� doesn鈥檛 mean that you are not in the interval between losing everything you take for granted and finding out that you have lost it.鈥� The strategies we use to hold ourselves together in the waiting areas of intensive care aren鈥檛 all healthy, and they have consequences, as this novel explores. 鈥淔rom now on,鈥� Sarah Moss writes, 鈥渓ife is a matter of mitigation.鈥�

Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Bodley Head

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