Book description
WINNER OF THE WALES BOOK OF THE YEAR AND SHORTLISTED FOR THE
PEN/ACKERLY PRIZE.
Several months after the death of poet Dannie Abse's wife, Joan, in
a car accident, he began to write a diary which is both a record of
present grief and a portrait of a marriage that lasted more than fifty
years. It is an extraordinary document, painful but celebratory, funny
yet often tragic, bursting with joy as well as sorrow and full of a
deep understanding of what it means to be human.
Dannie Abse was for many years a chest specialist in a London
teaching hospital. A poet, reviewer and playwright, he has written and
edited more than sixteen books of poetry, as well as books about
medicine and also fiction. He is the author of
Ash on a Young Man's Sleeve
and several autobiographical volumes, the most recent of which,
Goodbye, Twentieth Century
, was published by Pimlico in 2001 to critical acclaim. His most recent
novel,
The Strange Case of Dr Simmonds & Dr Glas
, was published in 2002 and long-listed for the Booker Prize. In 2003
his
New and Collected Poems
received the Special Commendation of the Poetry Book Society, and
Running Late
received the Roland Mathais Prize in 2007 and his
New Selected
Poems:1949 - 2009
was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Poetry in 2009.
