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Between Two KingdomsPenguin Random House LLC

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Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted Hardcover – February 9, 2021

by Suleika Jaouad (Author)

4.7 12,893 ratings

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to re-entry into “normal” life—from the founder of The Isolation Journals and a subject of the Netflix documentary American Symphony

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, The Rumpus, She Reads, Library Journal, Booklist

“I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review

“Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us.”—The Washington Post

In the summer after graduating from college, Suleika Jaouad was preparing, as they say in commencement speeches, to enter “the real world.” She had fallen in love and moved to Paris to pursue her dream of becoming a war correspondent. The real world she found, however, would take her into a very different kind of conflict zone.

It started with an itch—first on her feet, then up her legs, like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Next came the exhaustion, and the six-hour naps that only deepened her fatigue. Then a trip to the doctor and, a few weeks shy of her twenty-third birthday, a diagnosis: leukemia, with a 35 percent chance of survival. Just like that, the life she had imagined for herself had gone up in flames. By the time Jaouad flew home to New York, she had lost her job, her apartment, and her independence. She would spend much of the next four years in a hospital bed, fighting for her life and chronicling the saga in a column for The New York Times.

When Jaouad finally walked out of the cancer ward—after countless rounds of chemo, a clinical trial, and a bone marrow transplant—she was, according to the doctors, cured. But as she would soon learn, a cure is not where the work of healing ends; it’s where it begins. She had spent the past 1,500 days in desperate pursuit of one goal—to survive. And now that she’d done so, she realized that she had no idea how to live.

How would she reenter the world and live again? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Jaouad embarked—with her new best friend, Oscar, a scruffy terrier mutt—on a 100-day, 15,000-mile road trip across the country. She set out to meet some of the strangers who had written to her during her years in the hospital: a teenage girl in Florida also recovering from cancer; a teacher in California grieving the death of her son; a death-row inmate in Texas who’d spent his own years confined to a room. What she learned on this trip is that the divide between sick and well is porous, that the vast majority of us will travel back and forth between these realms throughout our lives. Between Two Kingdoms is a profound chronicle of survivorship and a fierce, tender, and inspiring exploration of what it means to begin again.

Print length

368 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

February 9, 2021
Dimensions

6.4 x 1.28 x 9.54 inches
ISBN-10

0399588582
ISBN-13

978-0399588587
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Popular Highlights in this book

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May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead.
Highlighted by 4,398 Kindle readers
To be well now is to learn to accept whatever body and mind I currently have.
Highlighted by 3,633 Kindle readers
For the person facing death, mourning begins in the present tense, in a series of private, preemptive goodbyes that take place long before the body’s last breath.
Highlighted by 2,575 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Here is the key to Between Two Kingdoms—Jaouad’s disarming honesty. There is no self-pity in this telling and few of the expected pieties . . . Jaouad is writing about a process, a back-and-forth. In the tension between health and sickness, past and present, a new balance must be forged.”—Los Angeles Times

“Jaouad’s book stands out not only because she has lived to parse the saga of her medical battle with the benefit of hindsight, but also because it encompasses the less familiar tale of what it’s like to survive and have to figure out how to live again.”—NPR

“I was immersed for the whole ride and would follow Jaouad anywhere. Her sensory snapshots remain in my mind long after reading . . . Not only can Jaouad tolerate the unbearable feelings, she can reshape them into poetry . . . Her writing restores the moon, lights the way as we learn to endure the unknown.”—Chanel Miller, The New York Times Book Review

“Beautifully crafted . . . affecting . . . a transformative read . . . Jaouad’s insights about the self, connectedness, uncertainty and time speak to all of us, not only readers who’ve faced a life-changing—and potentially life-ending—diagnosis. . . . The timing of this memoir is just right.”—The Washington Post

“When the life we had is snatched away, how do we find the conviction to live another? Between Two Kingdoms will resonate with anyone who is living a different life than they planned to live. This is a propulsive, soulful story of mourning and gratitude—and an intimate portrait of one woman’s sojourn in the wilderness between life and death.”—Tara Westover, author of Educated

“A beautiful, elegant, and heartbreaking book that provides a glimpse into the kingdom of illness . . . Suleika Jaouad avoids sentimentality but manages to convey the depth of the emotional turmoil that illness can bring into our lives.”—Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Emperor of All Maladies

“In a book bubbling with ambition and impeccable skill, it is what Suleika Jaouad does with courage and secondary characters that is simply once in a generation. Between Two Kingdoms mended parts I thought were forever disintegrated.”—Kiese Laymon, author of Heavy

"This is a deeply moving and passionate work of art, quite unlike anything I’ve ever read. I will remember these stories for years to come, because Suleika Jaouad has imprinted them on my heart.”—Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love

“Jaouad does a beautiful job of writing from this place of ‘dual citizenship,’ where she finds pain but also joy, kinship, and possibility.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Memorable, lyrical, and ultimately hopeful: a book that speaks intently to anyone who suffers from illness and loss.”—Kirkus Reviews

“Boldly candid and truly memorable.”—Booklist (starred review)

“This is a stunning memoir, well-crafted and hard to put down.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

About the Author

Suleika Jaouad wrote the Emmy Award–winning New York Times column Life, Interrupted. Her essays and feature stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine and Vogue and on NPR. She is also the creator of the Isolation Journals, a global project cultivating creativity and community during challenging times. Between Two Kingdoms is her first book.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

1

The Itch

It began with an itch. Not a metaphorical itch to travel the world or some quarter-life crisis, but a literal, physical itch. A maddening, claw-at-your-skin, keep-you-up-at-night itch that surfaced during my senior year of college, first on the tops of my feet and then moving up my calves and thighs. I tried to resist scratching, but the itch was relentless, spreading across the surface of my skin like a thousand invisible mosquito bites. Without realizing what I was doing, my hand began meandering down my legs, my nails raking my jeans in search of relief, before burrowing under the hem to sink directly into flesh. I itched during my part-time job at the campus film lab. I itched under the big wooden desk of my library carrel. I itched while dancing with friends on the beer-slicked floors of basement taprooms. I itched while I slept. A scree of oozing nicks, thick scabs, and fresh scars soon marred my legs as if they had been beaten with rose thistles. Bloody harbingers of a mounting struggle taking place inside of me.

“It might be a parasite you picked up while studying abroad,” a Chinese herbalist told me before sending me off with foul-smelling supplements and bitter teas. A nurse at the college health center thought it might be eczema and recommended a cream. A general practitioner surmised that it was stress related and gave me samples of an antianxiety medication. But no one seemed to know for sure, so I tried not to make a big deal out of it. I hoped it would clear up on its own.

Every morning, I would crack the door of my dorm room, scan the hall, and sprint in my towel to the communal bathroom before anyone could see my limbs. I washed my skin with a wet cloth, watching the crimson streaks swirl down the shower drain. I slathered myself in drugstore potions made of witch hazel tonic and I plugged my nose as I drank the bitter tea concoctions. Once the weather turned too warm to wear jeans every day, I invested in a collection of opaque black tights. I purchased dark-colored sheets to mask the rusty stains. And when I had sex, I had sex with the lights off.

Along with the itch came the naps. The naps that lasted two, then four, then six hours. No amount of sleep seemed to appease my body. I began dozing through orchestra rehearsals and job interviews, deadlines and dinner, only to wake up feeling even more depleted. “I’ve never felt so tired in my life,” I confessed to my friends one day, as we were walking to class. “Me too, me too,” they commiserated. Everyone was tired. We’d witnessed more sunrises in the last semester than we had in our entire lives, a combination of logging long hours at the library to finish our senior theses followed by boozy parties that raged until dawn. I lived at the heart of the Princeton campus, on the top floor of a Gothic-style dorm, crested with turrets and grimacing gargoyles. At the end of yet another late night, my friends would congregate in my room for one last nightcap. My room had big cathedral windows and we liked to sit on the sills with our legs dangling over the edge, watching as drunken revelers stumbled home and the first amber rays streaked the stone-paved courtyard. Graduation was on the horizon, and we were determined to savor these final weeks together before we all scattered, even if that meant pushing our bodies to their limits.

And yet, I worried my fatigue was different.

Alone in my bed, after everyone had gone, I sensed a feasting taking place under my skin, something wending its way through my arteries, gnawing at my sanity. As my energy evaporated and the itch intensified, I told myself it was because the parasite’s appetite was growing. But deep down, I doubted there ever was a parasite. I began to wonder if the real problem was me.

In the months that followed, I felt at sea, close to sinking, grasping at anything that might buoy me. For a while I managed. I graduated, then joined my classmates in the mass exodus to New York City. I found an ad on Craigslist for a spare bedroom in a large, floor-through loft located above an art supply store on Canal Street. It was the summer of 2010 and a heat wave had sucked the oxygen out of the city. As I emerged from the subway, the stench of festering garbage smacked me in the face. Commuters and hordes of tourists shopping for knockoff designer bags jostled each other on the sidewalks. The apartment was a third-floor walk-up and by the time I lugged my suitcase to the front door, sweat had turned my white tank top see-through. I introduced myself to my new roommates; there were nine of them. They were all in their twenties and aspiring something-or-others: three actors, two models, a chef, a jewelry designer, a graduate student, and a financial analyst. Eight hundred dollars a month bought each of us our own windowless cave partitioned by paper-thin drywall that a slumlord had erected to get the most bang for his buck.

I had scored a summer internship at the Center for Constitutional Rights, and when I showed up on my first day, I felt awed to be in the same room as some of the most fearless civil liberties lawyers in the country. The work felt important, but the internship was unpaid and living in New York City was like walking around with a giant hole in my wallet. I quickly blew through the two thousand dollars I’d saved up over the school year. Even with the babysitting and restaurant jobs I worked in the evenings, I was barely scraping by.

Imagining my future—expansive yet empty—filled me with terror. In moments when I allowed myself to daydream, it thrilled me, too. The possibilities of who I might become and where I might land felt infinite, a spool of ribbon unfurling far beyond what my mind’s eye could see. I envisioned a career as a foreign correspondent in North Africa, where my dad is from and where I’d lived for a stint as a kid. I also toyed with the idea of law school, which seemed like a more prudent route. Frankly, I needed money. I had only been able to attend an Ivy League college because I’d received a full scholarship. But out here, in the real world, I didn’t have the same kind of safety nets—trust funds, family connections, six-figure jobs on Wall Street—as many of my classmates.

It was easier to fret about the uncertainty ahead than to confront another, even more unsettling shift. During my last semester, to combat the fatigue, I had chugged caffeinated energy drinks. When those stopped working, a boy I’d briefly dated gave me some of his Adderall to survive finals. But soon that wasn’t enough either. Cocaine was a party staple in my circle of friends, and there were always guys hanging around who offered a line here and there for free. Nobody batted an eye when I started partaking. My roommates in the Canal Street loft had turned out to be hard-partying types, too. I began to take uppers the way some people add an extra shot of espresso to their coffee—a means to an end, a way to stave off my deepening exhaustion. In my journal, I wrote: Stay afloat.

By the last days of summer, I struggled to recognize myself. The muffled sound of my alarm clock dragged like a dull knife through dreamless sleep. Each morning, I’d stumble out of bed and stand in front of the floor-length mirror, taking inventory of the damage. Scratches and streaks of drying blood covered my legs in new places. My hair hung to my waist in dull, chaotic waves that I was too tired to brush. Shadowy crescents deepened into dark moons under big bloodshot eyes. Too burned-out to face sunlight, I started showing up later and later to my internship; then, one day, I stopped showing up altogether.

I disliked the person I was becoming—a person who tumbled headfirst into each day, in constant motion but without any sense of direction; a person who reconstructed blackouts, night after night, like some private investigator; a person who constantly reneged on commitments; a person who was too embarrassed to pick up her parents’ phone calls. This isn’t me, I thought, staring at my reflection with disgust. I needed to clean up my act. I needed to find a real job, one that paid. I needed some distance from my college crew and my Canal Street roommates. I needed to get the hell out of New York City, and soon.

On an August morning, a few days after I quit the internship, I rose early and took my laptop out to the fire escape and started searching for jobs. It had been a rainless summer, and the sun blazed, baking my skin to a tan, leaving little white dots like braille all over my legs where the scratching had scarred. A position for a paralegal at an American law firm in Paris caught my eye, and on a whim I decided to apply. I spent all day working on my cover letter. I made sure to mention that French was my first language and that I spoke some Arabic, too, hoping for a competitive edge. Being a paralegal wasn’t my ideal job—I didn’t even really know what it entailed—but it seemed like the kind of thing a sensible person might do. Mostly, I thought that a change of scenery could save me from my increasingly reckless behavior. Moving to Paris wasn’t a bucket list item: it was my escape plan.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House (February 9, 2021)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0399588582
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0399588587
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.2 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.4 x 1.28 x 9.54 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #20,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #30 in Sociology of Death (Books)
- #52 in Medical Professional Biographies
- #736 in Memoirs (Books)

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Suleika Jaouad

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Suleika Jaouad, is an Emmy Award-winning writer, speaker, cancer survivor and the creator of The Isolation Journals, a global movement cultivating community and creativity during hard times.

Born in New York City to a Tunisian father and a Swiss mother, Suleika Jaouad's career aspirations as a foreign correspondent were cut short when, at age 22, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She began writing the acclaimed New York Times column and video series "Life, Interrupted” from the front lines of her hospital bed, and has since become a fierce advocate for those living with illness and chronic pain.

She served on Barack Obama’s Presidential Cancer Panel, and her advocacy work, reporting and speaking engagements have brought her everywhere from the main stage of TED, the United Nations and Capitol Hill to a maximum security prison and a two-room schoolhouse in rural Montana. When she’s not on the road with her 1972 Volkswagen camper van and rescue dog Oscar, she lives in Brooklyn.

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Customers find the content inspirational, life-affirming, and thought-provoking. They describe the book as heartfelt, poignant, relatable, and comforting. Readers appreciate the honesty and struggles of the author. They describe the book is engaging, interesting, and enjoyable. They find the pacing moving, gripping, and riveting. Additionally, customers mention the book is eye-opening and stunning.

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139 customers mention "Inspirational content"139 positive0 negative

Customers find the content inspirational, life-affirming, and revelatory. They appreciate the author's deep thoughtfulness and candidness throughout. Readers also say the book is compelling, honest, and soul-baring.

"...its humanity - tear-jerking in its pain - but ultimately life-affirming in its realizations. Thank you for writing this! Wish you all the best!" Read more

"...Her journey through love, loss, heartbreak, and so much more is truly inspiring...." Read more

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92 customers mention "Heartfelt"87 positive5 negative

Customers find the book poignant, relatable, and beautiful. They say it's comforting in its humanity and gripping. Readers also mention the author is warm, thoughtful, and brave.

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55 customers mention "Honesty"55 positive0 negative

Customers find the book honest, grateful, and detailed. They say it gives an accurate view of life from a cancer patient's point of view. Readers also mention the story is fascinating.

"...Her writing style is simply beautiful. Very intelligent girl. As I was reading every page I felt her pain and courage...." Read more

"...Will, her primary caregiver throughout most of her treatment, is honest and forthright...." Read more

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32 customers mention "Readability"32 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging, interesting, and enjoyable. They describe it as compelling, thought-provoking, unforgettable, and rewarding. Readers also mention the writing is unique and captivating.

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21 customers mention "Pacing"21 positive0 negative

Customers find the pacing of the book very moving, gripping, and riveting. They also describe the beginning as gripping and puzzling. Readers also mention the memoir is vibrant and an amazing journey.

"...I found the entire thing absolutely riveting, but I do wish Suleika had shared more of her encounters on her cross country road trip...." Read more

"...This was a moving book, that didn’t try to be an uplifting postcard, and did a good job reckoning with the ultimately terrible reality of life...." Read more

"...a book that makes you both laugh and cry, Jaouad’s words are so filled with passion and emotion that the book is difficult to put down...." Read more

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14 customers mention "Eye opening"14 positive0 negative

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"...It was so well written and filled with a raw, honest look at the rollercoaster of setbacks and small triumphs on the road to surviving a serious..." Read more

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9 customers mention "Resilience"9 positive0 negative

Customers find the author open and vulnerable. They are in awe of her vulnerability and power.

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7 customers mention "Content"7 positive0 negative

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"I am at a loss for adequate superlatives here. An honest, raw, gut wrenching, sad, joyous, despairing, hopeful, beautiful book. So powerful...." Read more

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Dream Catcher

Wonderful book

Reviewed in the United States on September 21, 2022

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Suleika wrote her heart out. Her writing style is simply beautiful. Very intelligent girl. As I was reading every page I felt her pain and courage. Her will to live is tremendous. Her luck was lousy, because she got the leukemia but her luck was also fantastic because she had a wonderful man to love her, take care of her during her horrible struggles. She was a bit selfish to Will, he did everything he could, withstood a lot of her horrible treatment procedures was by her side for a long time, until it became too much. She went on by herself and made it. Once she went to remission, she decided to hit the road across America. Read the book to see why. Her road trip across America was way to hard on her body. She had just finished her horrible treatments and hit the road all alone in a used car. Brave you might say, but thoughtless I say. Very dangerous. She made the trip as a brand new driver to boot. Then she decides to stay in a cabin, again alone in the woods, no phone no nothing, again, risky. She took many chances, then the disappointment of a return of this monster that has been eating her all this time. She gets together with another wonderful man, an angel if you ask me.
Jon Batiste , a great composer and fantastic musician, who loves her dearly. Again her lucky star came through. But the monster within her woke up. It started to eat her again, lucky she had her brother to give her a matching bone marrows twice. She survived both, she’s a survivor and a fighter. I admire her will. She’s a great young lady, she writes, she survives, and I wish her all the good luck she needs to pull her though this second time of hell. She has a great husband, she has life in her and the will to live which is strong. Her realistic chances are kind of low at 35% survival, but what do they know, she will prove them wrong again as only she can. I certainly wish her strength and power to beat this monster again. I admire her, really admire her. Please let her good luck take over, let her spirit guide lead her out of this illness,and let her live happily ever after and perhaps write another nice book. She’s such a beautiful girl. Jon and Suleika look great together. Love.

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Andy

Wow!

Reviewed in the United States on September 9, 2024

Verified Purchase

Beautiful in its honesty - comforting in its humanity - tear-jerking in its pain - but ultimately life-affirming in its realizations. Thank you for writing this! Wish you all the best!

Reviewed in the United States on March 3, 2023

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Between Two Kingdoms follows Suleika Jaouad’s incredible battle with cancer and her journey with introspection once she’s recovered physically. Her journey through love, loss, heartbreak, and so much more is truly inspiring. This roller coaster through Suleika’s life takes such a personal and naked look at what Cancer treatment really looks like and the life altering effects it can have even has on life, relationships, and identity.
Additional, the lack of self pity in Suleika writing is unique and intriguing. She tells the story of her experience seemingly as it was not as could have or should have been especially when it came to her treatment, complications, and side effects. She is unapologetic with her storytelling which brings forward a sort of documentary like a novel rather than a fairytale.
All in all, Between Two Kingdoms is a defendant must read. You'll get lost in Jaouad’s thought provoking writing, reflecting on your life, morals, and identity.

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Alicia Crumpton

Story of Living a Life

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2024

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Jaouad, S. (2021). Between two kingdoms: A memoir of a life interrupted. Random House.

Suleika Jaouad, author and journalist, writer of the NY Times column Life Interrupted. She graduated from Princeton University with a BA in 2010.

In 2011, at the age of 22, Suleika was diagnosed with a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia and was given a 35% chance of survival. It's a raw story of a movement from a place where she "might land felt infinite" to standing "on the threshold between an old familiar state and an unknown future." Her words inform our understanding of the difficulty of living with cancer, being cared for, and caregiving. Describing her relationship with "Will," she observed, "Cancer is greedy. . . It has ravaged not only my body, but every single thing I've believed to be true about myself, and now it has metastasized to our relationship, ruining what was good and pure between us." Between two kingdoms refers to Susan Sontag's ideas about our having "dual citizenship, in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick." Suleika reflected, "I'm left with the question of how to repatriate myself to the kingdom of the well, and whether I ever fully can." This led her to a 100-day journey to visit people who wrote to her propelled by the notion that "travel can hurtle you out of old ways of being and create conditions for new ones to emerge." The last third of the book describes her road trip around the US. A quick Internet search indicates that her journey continues including a recurrence of the cancer making this story not so happier ever after. And yet, I'm struck by the resilience and capacity of a woman to face her mortality, to reflectively consider her future as an active engagement with the present. Such a painful, beautiful, and hopeful story.

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angela from Toronto

Poignant, Inspiring, Beautifully Written

Reviewed in Canada on September 23, 2024

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I borrowed this book from the library and loved it so much I bought the hardcover because I just had to have it. It is so much more than a moving story, a transformation, a testament to living. Suleika invites us into her world in a way that is so courageous, raw and vulnerable. I get all the feels just from seeing it on my book shelf!

Alja

Really good

Reviewed in Germany on September 1, 2024

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I recommend reading it, very inspiring and well written

Beth

must read.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 16, 2024

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Beautifully written, wise, messy and full of art and life. I read it fast but reread some chapters and passages over and over again. Full of lessons, heart and reality.

Edde Morgan

What an amazing insight into life

Reviewed in the Netherlands on January 13, 2024

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I feel that the book really dives into what it is to be sick. The mental anguish seems to be as bad as the physical. Susu really paints a great picture with her words.

Juan Manuel Vasquez

A must read

Reviewed in Mexico on April 22, 2021

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An amazing memoir, thought provoking, inspiring, full of insights. I highly recommended to anyone looking for motivation on how to live a richer life.

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