Between Two Kingdoms
A Memoir of a Life Interrupted
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Between Two Kingdoms
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Narrated by:
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Suleika Jaouad
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Written by:
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Suleika Jaouad
About this listen
New York Times best seller
A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to reentry into “normal” life - from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times
One of the Best Books of the Year: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist
“I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere.... Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.” (Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review)
“Beautifully crafted...affecting...a transformative read.... Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.” (The Washington Post)
In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world”. She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.
It started with an itch - first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her 23rd birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.
When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward - after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant - she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal - to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.
How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked - with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt - on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.
©2021 Suleika Jaouad (P)2021 Random House AudioWhat the critics say
“A beautiful, elegant, and heartbreaking book that provides a glimpse into the kingdom of illness...Suleika Jaouad avoids sentimentality but manages to convey the depth of the emotional turmoil that illness can bring into our lives.” (Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies)
"Here is the key to Between Two Kingdoms - Jaouad’s disarming honesty. There is no self-pity in this telling and few of the expected pieties....Jaouad is writing about a process, a back-and-forth. In the tension between health and sickness, past and present, a new balance must be forged.” (Los Angeles Times)
"I want to describe Suleika Jaouad with words like ‘courageous’, ‘resilient’, ‘vulnerable’, and ‘inspiring’ - but I understand that, for cancer survivors, these words can feel like empty clichés. The problem is, these words are true. Suleika Jaouad is courageous, resilient, vulnerable, and inspiring. And her memoir about her cancer journey is a work of breathtaking creativity and heart-stopping humanity. Jaouad’s story goes where you never expect it to go - not only into the depths of her own pain and lost years, but into the spirits of countless strangers (sick and well) she meets along the highway of own her life and illuminates with rare generosity and grace. This is a deeply moving and passionate work of art, quite unlike anything I’ve ever read. I will remember these stories for years to come, because Suleika Jaouad has imprinted them on my heart.” (Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love)
“Jaouad’s book stands out not only because she has lived to parse the saga of her medical battle with the benefit of hindsight, but also because it encompasses the less familiar tale of what it’s like to survive and have to figure out how to live again.” (NPR)
What listeners say about Between Two Kingdoms
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance2 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Karen
- 2024-08-20
Leukaemia
It was a sad story has story of triumph as well. I think the author should’ve let someone else read it for her but I can understand why she would want to read it herself because it is her story.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Anonymous User
- 2021-04-23
Couldn’t stop listening!
Absolutely devoured this read! I would recommend this to everyone! Thank you for sharing your story.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- JenB
- 2021-08-16
Highly recommend!
I would highly recommend this book to young ladies in their 20's that are looking for a book with a bit more depth than other novels. This book was a easy listen and something I consumed quickly. Her story was relatable in different ways and gives you perspective on the challenges in life.
I really loved listening to her voice. Glad it wasn't a robotic sounding author.
HIGHLY RECOMMEND
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Hannah
- 2021-04-30
Profound, heart wrenching and fantastic
I've been profoundly touched by this book.
Jaouad's writing is full of the sorts of eloquent, immense, transformative phrases and concepts that I search for in memoirs. Though an outsider to her experience, it doesn't seem as if she's pulled any punches, she unapologetically renders her history in precise, gorgeous prose that cuts deep and scours notions like mortality, love, commitment and the lengths we sometimes have to go to in order to find ourselves when we've been unmoored.
It's a heavy read, and I felt lucky to be able to listen to it in audiobook format as it's read by the author and hearing her story in her voice adds a quality to the telling that I don't think I would have had if I'd had physical pages in front of me.
There are so many sections of her story where I was bookmarking avidly, trying to keep track of the poignant, colossal phrases and metaphors that puzzle-pieced into my own life, that put to words things that I have felt, experiences I've witnessed. I was one of the main caretakers for my father when he was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, and I remember desperately trying to document moments with him, trying to squeeze a lifetime of memories into a few short months. Through this, I was aware of him being aware that that's what I was doing, and I don't know if there's a perfect solution for that sort of painful, forlorn time.
Jaouad writes: “When you are facing the possibility of imminent death people treat you differently. Their gaze lingers, recording each mole, tracing the shape of your lips, noting the exact shade of your eyes, as if they are painting a portrait of you to hang in memory’s gallery. They take dozens of pictures and videos of you on their phones, trying to freeze frame time, to bottle the sound of your laugh, to immortalize meaningful moments that can later be revisited in a memory cloud. All of this attention can feel like you are being memorialized while you are still alive.”
It's a story of survival against tremendous odds, a story of heartbreak of many kinds and a story of what it means and takes and costs to keep going forward despite it all.
It's all those things, but it's also heartwarming, and honest, and vivacious, and eye opening, and struck true for me on the choices we get to make every day to write our own story, and that it's okay sometimes to not have the words together yet:
“Topping 300 feet, the redwoods seem to be omniscient, clairvoyant giants, arrowing towards the heavens, overlooking the land. “What do you see that I can’t? Where do I go from here?” I want to ask them. As I listen to the high up branches creak in the wind, my breathing slows and deepens. It strikes me that the redwoods have accomplished, without effort or ego, what I have struggled so hard to do. They make existence as I can conceive of it, time measured in 100 day increments, seem laughably naïve and near-sighted. I feel so tiny and rootless in their midst. Right now, I am no redwood, I am a speck, a spore surfing the breeze, directionless and susceptible, blown any which way without the faintest clue of where I’ll land.”
and still:
"You can't force clarity when there's none to be had yet."
Having come across Suleika Jaouad's book has felt like a blessing. To be able to hear the incredible story and journey of such an incredible, yet regular person. I was endlessly struck by a sense of validation of my own thoughts and feelings, my own sense of being adrift, my own grief, my own fears despite so much of our stories not being comparable. I haven't lived her experiences, and yet her road trip and her working through all that had happened brought me a small sense of peace as well.
Thank you for sharing your story.
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1 person found this helpful
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Overall4 out of 5 stars
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Performance4 out of 5 stars
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Story4 out of 5 stars
- Rae
- 2021-08-03
A good story
A good story. I found that at times I had a lot of trouble identifying with the author, almost finding her entitled. Overall, she's got a great writing style and her story is one of triumph. I hope that she and Oscar (her pup) have many long and happy years ahead in whatever other adventures she undertakes - she has definitely suffered enough with her illness.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Victoria Tirmizi
- 2021-10-24
Wonderful Book
I loved the book. And recommend it highly. She has an interesting life story and tells it with much sensitivity and insight.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- Amazon Customer
- 2022-04-19
Beautiful, generous personal reflection
As a young cancer ‘survivor’ I haven’t read a book that more clearly and generously shares the experience of being a young person with cancer, and how that interweaves into all aspects of life in beautiful and terrible ways. Wonderfully narrated by the author, it was a balm to listen to.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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Performance5 out of 5 stars
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Story5 out of 5 stars
- E. J. KUPER REINGOLD
- 2022-05-11
An amazing book!
Someone I cannot recall suggested I read this book! I ask all my close friends if they recommended this book. They all reply no but tell me they are going to buy it on my advice!
This is a remarkable account of what it is like to be a patient. My husband is an Oncologist and has been telling me about his patients for 33 years. This book tells the other side of the coin examining what it is like to be sick and a patient . Suleika explains how difficult and life changing it is to go through an illness and return to your old life pre illness!
Beautifully written - a masterpiece!
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Mika Does Makeup
- 2023-04-21
ABSOLUTELY LOVE THIS BOOK
Suleika's story was deep and raw... I'm thankful she shared her experience with us and it showed me a glimpse of how she lived and dealt with her illness... She is a smart and strong willed woman. She is mature beyond her years and for good reason.
I will recommend this book to everyone.
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Overall5 out of 5 stars
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- Romolsen
- 2021-05-10
An extraordinary example of living in the Now!
Thank you for sharing your story! All inspiring! Also appreciate the author reading her words and telling her story!
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