Between Two Kingdoms

A Memoir of a Life Interrupted

By: Suleika Jaouad

Narrated by: Suleika Jaouad

Length: 13 hrs and 2 mins

Publisher's summary

New York Times best seller

A searing, deeply moving memoir of illness and recovery that traces one young woman’s journey from diagnosis to remission to reentry into “normal” life - from the author of the Life, Interrupted column in The New York Times

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 23rd 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.

©2021 Suleika Jaouad (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“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)

"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)

"I want to describe Suleika Jaouad with words like ‘courageous’, ‘resilient’, ‘vulnerable’, and ‘inspiring’ - but I understand that, for cancer survivors, these words can feel like empty clichés. The problem is, these words are true. Suleika Jaouad is courageous, resilient, vulnerable, and inspiring. And her memoir about her cancer journey is a work of breathtaking creativity and heart-stopping humanity. Jaouad’s story goes where you never expect it to go - not only into the depths of her own pain and lost years, but into the spirits of countless strangers (sick and well) she meets along the highway of own her life and illuminates with rare generosity and grace. 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’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)

Between 2 Kingdoms

This book is by far my 2023 favorite. I would love to sit across a table from this great writer and ask so many questions. The strength, courageous and love it took to press forward is beyond remarkable.

What I most enjoyed are the victories through and over the cancer, and all of the treatments. The nurses, the parents, friends, Will. So many emotions.

The Road trips were very powerful, esp the hosts of people and experiences during the travels. I wanted to do something similar, but was too afraid. Maybe now I will reconsider.

The return home, settling back at the cabin and the writings of what has now become a blockbuster book. What an experience!!

Yes, no doubt, this is a book to be read by all. So many moving experiences. So many stories albeit many were painful. But, the memories - forever.

I thank Suleika Jaouad for each sacrifice made. I appreciate this story far more than you will ever know. And, if I might say, I appreciate Will, too. I wished for the friendship. But, despite the relationship, Will did a great service.

I L O V E ❤️ T H I S B O O K.

Insightful

This was a unique look into the life of a chronically ill woman. Those of us in health care identify people by their illness. This is her story how she is oppressed by cancer, lives through treatment, and becomes a cancer survivor. I’m glad she chose to share this with us. It made me happy to be human.

Devastatingly honest and soul searching

I'm so thankful that Suleika had the courage to write and share her story. I especially loved her compassion and empathy for Little GQ and for her also staying within the boundaries of reality. Our humanity connects us, even when our actions disconnect us.

Beautiful story from a beautiful soul!

This book is going to stay with me for a long while. My courageous mom lost her eight year battle with a blood cancer. I always knew my mom was the toughest women I’ve ever known. Suleika’s story has reinforced this for me. So many things I realized while listening to this book, and it’s hard to explain, them all. All I know is….I loved it so much that I have to have the hard back book in my house! It’s going with my collection of most favorite reads!

A deeply reflective and honest look at self & life

Just finished the audio version in 3 days that took me to places with language and tone that are reverberating quietly. With gratitude of having been touched by Sulieka's experience and those who accompanied her. This has caused a welcomed tilting, unearthing & buoying of my inner world.

All 5 Stars

I couldn't stop listening. i listened before my daily siestas. I listened in the car anytime I was alone. As a survivor of oral tongue cancer and 2 metastasis with radical surgeries, radiation, and weeks and weeks of chemo, I appreciated the reality that Suleika brings to her experience. I find myself shaking my head yes several times. I, too, have lost so many to my same version of the beast that is cancer. The pain of having acquaintance that you've only "met" through Facebook survivors tell you that they don't want to die after the cancer has moved to their lungs is heart breaking. i got a second chance. I am doing as much as I can with that chance.

Gorgeous Writing, A Story That Stays In the Soul

Riveting, honest, beautifully rendered chronicle. A celebration of the spaces of uncertainty that hold the most exquisite people, experience and places. A raw study of ways in which loss offers gifts of healing and humanity.
Jaouad's story will stay with me.

Harrowing Journey

Suleika’s recount of her diagnosis and treatments is beautiful and shocking at once. Her ability to profile how life can be interrupted at an age when careers are being established by all of her peers is spectacular. Great read to put health, illness and life into perspective.

A telling story of illness and survival

I love this book! It was captivating. Such a poignant story of how illness effects whole families and changes lives forever.

Beautiful

It just got better and better as I listened. Wonderfully and beautifully told story of her incredible journey.