Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

Jeroen Brouwers – Datumloze dagen (Atlas, 2007)

In Datumloze dagen (Dateless days) by Jeroen Brouwers father and son find each other when it’s too late; one of them is dying. A beautiful story about life, death and shame. Brouwers remains a true master. In this novel he describes the break-up of a love affair as a result of one of the partner’s desire to have children.

Amanda Kluveld – Pijn, een culturele geschiedenis van de pijn (Arbeiderspers, 2007)

In Pijn, historian Amanda Kluveld describes how suffering attracts and repels. For most of us it’s a source of fear, desperation and loneliness. But at the same time performance artists pierce their bodies, exploring the outer limits
of pain, and people are fascinated with the legendary photo of Fou-Tchou-Li undergoing ‘Ling Chi’ or ‘Death by a thousand cuts’. In this “cultural history of pain”, Amanda Kluveld academically and passionately investigates the mystery of pain which is hidden somewhere between the mind and the body.

Physical suffering is one of the most influential factors in human life. It makes you reconsider things and wonder about the meaning of life. Like love, pain is a source of fear and suffering, desperation and loneliness, desire and fascination, art and literature. Everyone knows what pain is, but that doesn’t make the phenomenon less intriguing.
People today feel that pain prevents them from developing themselves and finding true happiness. But it is exactly that shared fear and abhorrence of pain that makes certain people embrace it. While most of us reach for the pills at the slightest headache, some performance artists explore the outer limits of pain.

In this book, Amanda Kluveld, historian at the department of humanities at Amsterdam University, talks about the history of attraction to and the abhorrence of pain. A unique book about an important subject.

Ruth McKernan – Billy’s Halo: Love, Science and My Father’s Dream (Doubleday Books, 2006)

Ruth McKernan is an internationally renowned neuroscientist. When her father, a biochemist, becomes ill, all her knowledge and expertise are in vain. In Billy’s Halo she describes the last year of her father’s life in a personal and gripping story, which she intertwines with neuroscientfic facts.

As Ruth McKernan’s father slowly succumbs to a mysterious illness, she relies on her professional training as a neuroscientist to help her work through her fear and grief. This moving memoir of love, science, and a parent s death is an inspired blend of personal revelations and professional insights. Science is just one way of looking at life. As a neuroscientist working at the forefront of medical research, it is Ruth McKernan’s way. For a while it was her father Billy’s way, too. Indeed, science was a language they shared until Billy inexplicably lapsed into a coma after being admitted to the hospital.

As Ruth watches her father’s life ebbing away, she struggles to understand what is happening, grasping for control of the scientific knowledge that would allow her to objectify and analyze his medical condition. A postman’s son who parlayed his formidable intellect and natural strength of character into a successful career, Billy was always a difficult and demanding father. But it took his collapse and slow slide toward death for Ruth to realize how intense her feelings were for him.

Ruth recounts the story of Billy’s last year while exploring a collection of cutting-edge scientific themes delving into memory, consciousness, microbes, and stem cells gracefully linking them together like pearls strung upon the thread of her father’s life. A true labor of love, Billy’s Halo shines with heartfelt emotion, yet manages to provide a crystal-clear explanation of the way our brains and bodies work in sickness and in health. (The National Academies Press)