The Undying (book)

The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care
First edition cover image
AuthorAnne Boyer
Audio read byAmy Finegan
Cover artistStrick&Williams
LanguageEnglish
Subject
Genre
PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date
17 September 2019
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages308/320 (first edition)
AwardsPulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction
ISBN978-0-374-27934-9 (first edition, hardback)
OCLC1089841413
616.99/4490092 B
LC ClassRC280.B8 B645 2019

The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care is a 2019 memoir by the American author, poet, and essayist Anne Boyer. The book chronicles Boyer's experience as a breast cancer patient. Boyer takes an untraditional approach to the standard illness narrative, by weaving together her personal journey as a patient in treatment with reflections on art and literature, and critiques of capitalism and the medical industry.

The book won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and was a finalist for the PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award. The Pulitzer committee described the book as "an elegant and unforgettable narrative about the brutality of illness and the capitalism of cancer care in America."