There was one photo in particular-the cover photo now-that seemed to say the most and it was clear it would be the one. But you have your phone and photos on them would serve as mirrors, and also ways to track my condition-was I losing weight? Was I getting paler? Was health slipping away more?Īt one point, I handed over dozens of these images I had taken of myself and there was a collage-like cover featuring them all. And if you are lying in your bed at home or lying in a hospital bed, you don’t really have access to mirrors. I was mixed for a moment about this-it’s a lot to imagine your face at book stores and all over the internet for ages to come, but especially your face associated with a word like “sick!” Then it seemed to make sense to me, when I remembered how many selfies-before they were called “selfies!”-I had taken during my sickest years. Do you do some play on Lyme? (At one point a lime green cover was an option to which I yelped, please no!) Hospital paraphernalia? Meds? Doctors? The one thing the team at HarperPerennial seemed to have decided early on was that it would feature a photo of me. This book would definitely be unlike other books I have written or would write.

But for this third book of mine, Sick: A Memoir, we had a real dilemma on my hands. On my second novel, for the hardcover, I even got my friend the renowned Iranian artist Ali Banisadr to give us a detail from a mural for the cover. With both my first and second books we went back and forth a lot on the covers-there was a lot of input from me. On some level a book is an art object and I love buying beautiful books in hardcover just like I’d by art. Covers have always been very important to me.

Porochista khakpour sick a memoir