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Patient

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Bloomsbury presents Patient written and read by Ben Watt
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THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED MEMOIR OF BEN WATT'S BATTLE WITH A RARE ILLNESS
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'Intensely moving' - Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph

'Quiet elegance and ringing epiphanic lyricism... a nearly flawless telling of his unexpected and drawn-out battle with an extremely rare - and nearly fatal - illness' - New Yorker
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In 1992, Ben Watt, a member of the band Everything But The Girl, contracted a rare life-threatening illness that baffled doctors and required months of hospital treatment and operations. This is the story of his fight for survival and the effect it had on him and those nearest him.

'In the summer of 1992, on the eve of a trip to America, I was taken to a London hospital with bad chest pain and stomach pains. They kept me in for two and half months. I fell very ill – about as ill it is possible to be without actually dying – confronting a disease hardly anyone, not even some doctors, had heard of. People ask what was it like, and I say yes, of course it was dramatic and graphic and all that stuff, but at times it was just kind of comic and strange. It was, I suppose, my life-changing story.'
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'Ben Watt's harrowing, candid account of his near death from one of the world's rarest diseases lives on in the mind - a fine testimonial to his fortitude, his powers as a writer and the NHS.' - William Boyd, Sunday Times

Critics Review

An astonishingly assured anatomy of his ordeal, by turns terrifying, mordantly funny and intensely moving. Many people suffer the pain and indignities of intensive medical treatment; but few have written about it with quite such alarming vividness or clarity
Daily Telegraph
Watt is made of particularly fine stuff, possessed of a shining intelligence that allowed him to transcend his horrible circumstances. I cannot think of any book that so clearly describes the gap between sickness and health, the greatest gap that exists between human beings
The Times
A vivid account of what it's like to be terribly ill. The details of Watt's hospitalization are brilliantly recollected, and he writes with a songwriter's eye for the telling phrase
Observer
This is not so much for the music lover as for lovers of life
The Times
Five minutes after beginning Patient I knew I was going to be all right. Watt is such a responsible, deft writer that you feel straightaway you're in good hands. He doesn't want your sympathy - he wants to tell you something about the world. He makes you laugh. The thing is you can read this and not feel sorry for him. That's his achievement
Mail on Sunday
As gripping as an airport novel and as gruelling as a horror story
Q Magazine
Quiet elegance and ringing epiphanic lyricism. Watt's writing shares these qualities and his book is a nearly flawless telling of his unexpected and drawn-out battle with an extremely rare - and nearly fatal - illness
New Yorker
Ben Watt's harrowing, candid account of his near death from one of the world's rarest diseases lives on in the mind - a fine testimonial to his fortitude, his powers as a writer and the NHS.
William Boyd, Sunday Times

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