This Is the Door

In This is the Door, Darcey Steinke gets to the heart of pain with her celebrated insight and empathy. With chapters that trace the contours of a body - spine, knees, skin and more - she considers how we make sense of pain through history, philosophy, religion, popular culture and personal experience.

Steinke takes readers under the knife, through the archives and across oceans; she walks the tightrope between suffering and ecstasy. She interviews working physicians, analyses the writings of Frida Kahlo, recalls her own back surgery and travels to Lourdes. Her journey reveals a series of questions. Does pain educate? Is pain always a physical experience of negation? What can we learn from wounding, from winnowing, from the stillness, the de-creation that intense pain brings? Does pain obliterate the sufferer but also somehow re-create them? Is it possible to be created a second time?

Taking on a subject relevant to us all - whether we are hurting or know someone who is - This Is the Door illuminates the experience of pain: its myriad and transformative effects on the body, mind and soul. It is a singular study of our corporeal limits that is destined to become a classic.