The shaking woman, or A history of my nerves

While speaking at a memorial event for her father, Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. She managed to finish her talk and the paroxysms stopped, but not for good. Again and again she found herself a victim of the shudders. What had happened?Chronicling her search for the shaking woman, Hustvedt takes the reader on a journey into contemporary psychiatry, neurology and psychoanalysis. She unearths stories and theories from the annals of medical history, literature and philosophy, and delves into her own past. In the process, she raises fundamental questions: what is the relationship between mind and body? How do we remember? What is the self?In a seamless synthesis of personal experience and extensive research, Hustvedt conveys the often frightening mysteries of illness and the complexities of diagnosis. As engaging as it is thought-provoking, The Shaking Woman brilliantly illuminates the age-old dilemma of the mental and the physical, and what it means to be human.

Siri Hustvedt's first novel, The Blindfold, was published by Sceptre in 1993. Since then she has published The Enchantment of Lily Dahl, What I Loved, The Sorrows of an American and The Summer Without Men. She is also the author of the poetry collection Reading To You, and four collections of essays, Yonder, Mysteries of the Rectangle: Essays on Painting, A Plea for Eros and Living, Thinking, Looking, as well as the memoir The Shaking Woman: A History of My Nerves. Born in Minnesota, Siri Hustvedt now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She has a PhD in English from Columbia University and in 2012 was awarded the International Gabarron Prize for Thought and Humanities. www.sirihustvedt.net

Forfatteren forteller her om sine skjelvetokter. Første gang dette rammer henne står hun på talerstolen og skal holde en minnetale for sin avdøde far. I en blanding av selvbiografi, personlig essay og vitenskapelig undersøkelse leter hun i boka etter historiene bak anfallene. Hun tar både utgangspunkt i personlige erfaringer og det mer allmennmenneskelige.

While speaking at a memorial event for her father, the novelist Siri Hustvedt suffered a violent seizure from the neck down. Was it triggered by nerves, emotion - or something else entirely? In this profoundly thought-provoking and revealing book, Hustvedt takes the reader on her journey through psychiatry, philosophy, neuroscience and medical history in search of a diagnosis. Conveying the often frightening mysteries of illness, she illuminates the perenially mysterious connection between mind and body and what we mean by 'I'.

By the bestselling author of WHAT I LOVED, an intimate and enlightening account of her search for the key to her mysterious nervous disorder, which brilliantly illuminates the connection between mind and body.