Cytomegalovirus: A Hospitalization Diary - Paperback

by Hervé Guibert (Author), David Caron (Introduction by), Todd Meyers (Afterword by)

By the time of his death, Herve Guibert had become a singular literary voice on the impact of AIDS in France. He was prolific. His oeuvre contained some twenty novels, including To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life and The Compassion Protocol. He was thirty-six years old. In Cytomegalovirus, Guibert offers an autobiographical narrative of the everyday moments of his hospitalization because of complications of AIDS. Cytomegalovirus is spare, biting, and anguished. Guibert writes through the minutiae of living and of death--as a quality of invention, of melancholy, of small victories in the face of greater threats--at the moment when his sight (and life) is eclipsed.

This new edition includes an Introduction and Afterword contextualizing Guibert's work within the history of the AIDS pandemic, its relevance in the contemporary moment, and the importance of understanding the quotidian aspects of terminal illness.

Author Biography

Hervé Guibert (1955-91) was a French journalist and photographer before becoming a prominent literary figure in the early 1980s. He published nearly two dozen works in his lifetime, several of which deal with HIV/AIDS.

David Caron is Professor of French and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. He is the author of The Nearness of Others: Searching for Tact and Contact in the Age of HIV.

Todd Meyers is Associate Professor of Medical Anthropology at Wayne State University. He is the author of The Clinic and Elsewhere: Addiction, Adolescents, and the Afterlife of Therapy.

Clara Orban is Professor and Chair of French and Italian at DePaul University.