Hardback : HK$170.00
To be alive is to be in perpetual change: growing, healing, learning, aging. In Shapeshifters, award-winning writer and doctor Gavin Francis considers the transformations in mind and body that continue across the arc of human life.
Some of these changes we have little choice about. We can't avoid puberty, the menopause, or our hair turning grey. Others may be welcome milestones along our path - a much-wanted pregnancy, a cancer cured, or a long-awaited transition to another gender. We may find ourselves turning down dark paths, towards the cruel distortions of anorexia, or the shifting sands of memory loss. New technologies can upgrade us, and even without them our bodies can transform in rare, almost magical, ways - with gigantism, or the sun-sensitivity and facial hair that led porphyria sufferers, once upon a time, to be suspected as werewolves.
Medicine now has unprecedented power to alter our lives, but that power has limitations. As he helps patients face transformations both temporary and sustained, Francis draws on history, art, literature, myth and magic to show how the very essence of being human is change.
To be alive is to be in perpetual change: growing, healing, learning, aging. In Shapeshifters, award-winning writer and doctor Gavin Francis considers the transformations in mind and body that continue across the arc of human life.
Some of these changes we have little choice about. We can't avoid puberty, the menopause, or our hair turning grey. Others may be welcome milestones along our path - a much-wanted pregnancy, a cancer cured, or a long-awaited transition to another gender. We may find ourselves turning down dark paths, towards the cruel distortions of anorexia, or the shifting sands of memory loss. New technologies can upgrade us, and even without them our bodies can transform in rare, almost magical, ways - with gigantism, or the sun-sensitivity and facial hair that led porphyria sufferers, once upon a time, to be suspected as werewolves.
Medicine now has unprecedented power to alter our lives, but that power has limitations. As he helps patients face transformations both temporary and sustained, Francis draws on history, art, literature, myth and magic to show how the very essence of being human is change.
Stories from the GP's waiting room, brought lyrically to life by the bestselling author of Adventures in Human Being
Gavin Francis is a GP, and the author of True North and Empire
Antarctica: Ice, Silence and Emperor Penguins, which won the
Scottish Book of the Year Award and was shortlisted for the
Ondaatje Prize and Costa Prize. He also writes for the Guardian,
the Times, London Review of Books and Granta. He lives in Edinburgh
with his wife and children. Find him on Twitter @gavinfranc and
online at www.gavinfrancis.com.
Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library that aims to
challenge how we think and feel about health. Wellcome Collection
exhibitions, events and books explore a diverse range of subjects,
including consciousness, forensic medicine, emotions, sexology,
identity and death. wellcomecollection.org
A wonderful series of meditations - clinical, anthropological,
literary and deeply humane - on his patients and their
illnesses.
*Henry Marsh*
In this provocative and important book about our shared future,
Francis ranges broadly to describe altered human states and selves.
He delves into medical history, and, with equal ease, into medical
case studies, to reveal how humans are capable of changing our
bodies and minds.
*Siddhartha Mukherjee*
Wonderful, written with a deep feeling for language. A
writer-physician who sees the drama and beauty in human life.
*Annie Dillard*
Francis's method is to weave together stories from his general
practice, his medical training and his travels, with a host of
quotes, references and anecdotes from art, literature and history.
The result is a rich pleasure.
*The Sunday Times*
Timely, thought-provoking and eloquent... brimming both with warmth
and insight, he puts himself among the ranks of physicians with
fine pens, including Oliver Sacks and Atul Gawande, who, for all
their learning, retain a deep humility.
*The Times*
Stylish and exhilarating... from a wide-ranging mind and a profound
humanity. With warmth and wit, Gavin Francis examines the body's
strategies for survival and change, embedding his thoughts in a
broad frame of reference from across human culture and history.
Each piece is a pleasure to read, and in sum they are
inspiring.
*Hilary Mantel*
As compelling as it is affecting
*Scotland on Sunday*
Such is the breadth of Francis's interests that Shapeshifters is
never less than intellectually energetic
*Guardian*
[An] enthralling collection of illustrated pieces about human
transformation.
*Sunday Express*
Shapeshifters is beautifully written as well as extremely
absorbing
*Sunday Herald*
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