The Advantages of Nearly Dying - Softcover

Rosen, Michael

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1739772296 ISBN 13: 9781739772291

Publisher: Smokestack Books, 2023

Synopsis

Michael Rosen was dangerously ill from COVID at the beginning of 2020 and as doctors told him, if he hadn’t received treatment, he would have ‘gone’. While he was in hospital, 42% of the patients on his intensive care ward died. He spent three months in hospital, of which nearly seven weeks were in an induced coma, followed by several weeks recovering in an ordinary ward and then in a Rehabilitation Hospital. He couldn’t walk and his memory was damaged. Three years later his hearing and eyesight are still badly affected (‘I can’t hear with my left eye, I can’t see with my left ear and I get muddled’).

Following his best-selling COVID memoirs Many Different Kinds of Love: a story of life, death and the NHS and Sticky McStickstick: the friend who helped me walk again, his new collection for grown-ups records his bewilderment with what’s happened, and shares his thoughts about the politics of the pandemic – the ‘crazed incompetence’ of the Tory government and the war against the ‘Oldies’ that led to over 200,000 dead in the UK. Unforgiving, whimsical, grim, warm, philosophical and comical, The Advantages of Nearly Dying is a book about hospital appointments, waiting-rooms, blood-tests, brain-scans, eye-tests – and a song of praise for the NHS.

About this title

About the Author

Michael Rosen was born in North London in 1946. After university he worked for the BBC on Play School and Schools TV. He has written and edited over 200 books, including Mind Your Own Business, Wouldn’t You Like to Know, Mustard, Custard, Grumble Belly and Gravy, You Tell Me, No Breathing in Class and Quick Let’s Get Out of Here. You Can’t Catch Me! won the Signal Poetry Award. We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, illustrated by Helen Oxenbury, won the Smarties Prize. He currently presents Radio Four’s long-running Word of Mouth. Recent books for grown-ups include The Disappearance of Emile Zola, The Author, Workers’ Tales, Reading and Rebellion and So They Call You Pisher! and three Smokestack collections – Don’t Mention the Children, Listening to a Pogrom on the Radio and Mr Mensh. He was Children’s Laureate from 2007-9 and is Professor of Children’s Literature at Goldsmith’s, University of London.

Edition details

• Publisher: Smokestack Books
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1739772296
• ISBN 13: 9781739772291
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 220