Susan Sontag has survived the terrors of Sarajevo, cancer and a horrific car crash to come back with an acclaimed new novel. The Observer Imagine an author embarking on her second major novel, about a Polish actress who emigrates to America.
Plot is charted, characters sketched, when the plans for writing are thrown off track.
They take months to mend, during which time it is almost impossible to write, but eventually our author resumes work on her book. Before long, however, doctors diagnose cancer. Unable to write while taking morphine for crippling pain, she is again obliged to shelve the project. Finally, the disease is driven into remission and she returns to writing. There are many authors who might by now have adapted their subject matter to something more obviously self-centred, but the original themes of this novel, published in the UK next month, remain unchanged.