Cancer of Capricorn
Publisher
:
Rivages
Parution date
:
EAN
:
9782743620349
Number of pages
:
183
Description
A few days into the new millennium, Jean-Jacques Busino was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and told he had only months to live. In Cancer of Capricorn he starts from the earliest days of his medical nightmare and paints a vivid and horrifying picture of his physical and emotional experiences. His situation in itself would be worthy of telling, meaningful to read about, inspirational to understand; but Cancer of Capricorn takes us far beyond any medical memoir we have ever read before. It introduces a true understanding of pain, life, and death.
Busino’s situation might be unbearable, but his love of music, movingly described, and his reminiscences of childhood help him to—almost—come to terms with his illness and his intractable pain. He is beginning to regain a sense of himself when his teenage son, riding his bicycle just a few steps from their home, is struck by a car. The boy recovers from a coma, but his body is so destroyed that he will never be able to walk or speak again; yet he can experience severe pain, which the medical bureaucracy neglects to treat with opioids.
Busino finds his son’s pain unbearable to watch and, in a moment of deep despair, he uses some of his own prescribed morphine to help the boy. Busino visits daily but can’t stand to watch the machines that manipulate his son’s body and his life. One day he reaches the impossible conclusion that he must relieve his son’s suffering: He must help his son die . . .
Not many people are brave enough to tell such a searing and painful story. And even fewer are talented enough to tell it with such unwavering strength; with beauty, tenderness, and even humor. Here is the voice of a man who, after writing many books of fiction, now writes his own reality in order to survive.
Author
Jean-Jacques Busino :
Jean-Jacques Busino was born in Geneva in 1965. He is a musician and producer and has published five novels with Rivages/noir, a division of Payot/Rivages.
|