In the land of pain
By: Alphonse Daudet ; edited and translated by Julian Barnes.
Contributors: Barnes, Julian.
Publisher: Jonathan Cape
Published: 2002
Place of publication: London
Language: eng
Number of pages: 87
Subjects: Daudet, Alphonse, -- 1840-1897 -- Health; Authors, French -- 19th century -- Biography; Syphilis -- Patients -- France -- Biography; Pain in literature; Syphilis in literature
Genres: Biography.
Work titles: Doulou.
Description: "Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) was one of the most popular nineteenth-century French novelists, whose work radiated humour and good cheer. What few except those close to him knew was that for his enitre adult life he suffered from syphilis, a disease both unmentionable and incurable at the time. What even fewer knew was that for the last dozen years of his life he kept an intimate notebook in which he recorded the inevitable development and terrifying effects of the disease. He described the often alarming treatments he took in the desperate attempt to defeat the disease, and wrote with comic zest about life in the spa-towns to which he was sent for a cure. Even for a time when we are more openly confessional about illness, Daudet remains exemplary and instructive, both in his lucid self-examination and in his amused stoicism. In the Land of Pain was first published by Daudet's widow in 1930."--BOOK JACKET.