To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life

Hervé Guibert

£10.99

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Serpent's Tail
5 August 2021
ISBN: 9781788168397
Paperback
288 pages

From the publisher

The cult classic that describes with devastating, darkly comic clarity the experience of living with and dying from AIDS

A New York Times Book of the Year

After being diagnosed with AIDS, Hervé Guibert wrote this devastating, darkly humorous and personal novel, chronicling three months in the penultimate year of the narrator's life. In the wake of his friend Muzil's death, he goes from one quack doctor to another, from holidays to test centres, and charts the highs and lows of trying to cheat death.

On publication in 1990, the novel scandalized French media, which quickly identified Muzil as Guibert's close friend Michel Foucault. The book became a bestseller, and Guibert a celebrity. The book has since attained a cult following for its tender, fragmented and beautifully written accounts of illness, friendship, sex, art and everyday life. It catapulted Guibert into notoriety and sealed his reputation as a writer of shocking precision and power.