"Artificial Stars in My Body" Author: [Ireland] Sinead Gleason Publisher: Yiye Folio | Guangxi Normal University Press

【Editor's recommendation】

Our bodies are sacred, but they don’t just belong to us.

People can get sick, but they cannot become the disease: a life story that transcends illness and reaches the eternity of art, a healing journey to redefine and redeem oneself. Whether it is illness or heartbreak, we all live under the same skin, knowing its fragility, experiencing its reality, and fighting for its sovereignty.

Hair, blood, uterus, face, love and pain build the starry sky of female life; motherhood, art, creation, death, a physical escape from imprisonment through writing

Starting from her own experience of illness since childhood, Gleason combines the presentation of the female body in literature, art, history, and social development, and writes with scalpel-like strokes about the meaning of the body in women's life experience, showing how gender and illness define, invade, and rob women of their bodily sovereignty.

★Writing between literary essays and sociology, romantic and rigorous, gentle and firm, Gleason shows her magical charm as a writer, storyteller and poet

As one of the most popular female writers in Ireland today, Sinéad Gleason's works combine multiple genres such as prose, poetry, literary criticism and personal memoirs. Her writing combines rational thinking with rich emotions.

★From physical illness to love and marriage, from the death of relatives and friends to the birth of life, from social changes to new trends in literature and art, from looking back at history to looking forward to the future

Through these articles, we can not only observe a woman's rich life full of suffering and happiness, but also analyze the misunderstandings and harms suffered by women's bodies in culture and society through the wise eyes of social observers.

★The best book of 2019 in Europe and America, a masterpiece that makes women cry and men reflect: "The female body is a battlefield, and this book is the burning evidence!"

2019 Irish Book Award for Non-Fiction; 2019 Irish Bestseller No.1

The Guardian, The Observer, The New Statesman, The Irish Times Book of the Year

★Imported special paper double cover, cutting-edge designer Xihe is responsible for the binding design, and a doctor of European and American literature is dedicated to the translation

The cover is elegant and gentle, delicately presenting the female body that has suffered misunderstanding and hurt. The 120*200 slim format is beautiful, portable and interesting.

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【Content Introduction】

"We build our own multiple bodies, like Russian dolls,

But which version should we keep as our own? "

Sinead Gleeson suffered from monoarthritis when she was a girl, and leukemia when she was an adult. She spent most of her youth in pain. In order to seek hope of recovery, she bathed in the holy spring of Lourdes, but encountered disillusionment of faith.

She began to turn inward and explore her own pain, and then came the greatest joy of her life - falling in love and becoming a mother. Then she turned her attention outside the body and began to delve into history, art, literature and music, and began to write about the intimate experience of the female body, rebirth from illness and finding hope in limitations.

At the intersection of personal experience and society, history, and culture, Gleason examines the significance of bones, hair, blood, and uterus to women one by one, as if dissecting a body, and explores how contemporary women, who are deeply influenced by Irish religious traditions and patriarchal ideas, seek a balance between physical illness, raising children, bodily autonomy, and artistic creation.

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【Media Recommendation】

Sinéad Gleason’s commitment to supporting women’s voices has changed the Irish literary landscape. And in this book, we finally hear her own voice, a voice that comes from the blood and bones of Gleason’s body history. She is an absolute force: if you want to know where passion and tenacity come from, read this book.

—Ann Enright (2007 Booker Prize winner)

The Artificial Star in Me is a truly beautiful book. It is about the great limitations of the body, which is punched through by almost everything else in the universe, from songs to stars.

—Sarah Baum

These brilliant essays read like Gleason's vow to her readers to reveal what it means to inhabit a human body all the days of her life—for better or worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. Come for the dark jokes and existential dread. Stay for the beauty and tenderness.

—Jenny Offill

This is a gleaming work…insightful, poetic, tender, angry, a remarkable book, an astonishing debut.

—Robert McFarland

Intimate and universal, the most powerful collection of essays I’ve read in years.

--John Byrne (author of The Boy in the Striped Pajamas)

Gleason is a skilled storyteller who strikes a delicate balance between her stories and her analysis of her personal world.

——The Guardian

Gleason has a dangerously sharp eye for detail, especially for the absurd or tragic, and she is a meticulous writer who has emerged from her illness resilient and unyielding.

—The Times

You have to have a heart of stone to ignore the charm of these "hymns" and "odes"... This book is full of life and sincerity.

——The Independent, UK

Sinead Gleeson writes with unparalleled passion about the body and art, ghosts and womanhood, grief and motherhood, and what it’s like to live in a body that lets you down. As the perfect title suggests, each essay stands out and shines on its own, but together they form a powerful emotional universe.

——Elle (UK edition)

This book is searing evidence that the female body is a political battlefield.

——The Daily Telegraph

It’s clear that Gleason’s insights don’t come easily; and, like the women who inspire her, she has found a way to transform her experiences into something powerful that demands to be heard.

——The Observer

Like Olivia Lane’s The Lonely City, it’s this balance between intellect and humanity that’s most important… In addition to entertainment and enlightenment, we need writing in our lives that reaches deep into our hearts.

——The Irish Independent

These essays, about health, art, gender, motherhood, grief, the body, and Gleason’s own struggles, are moving, profound, and beautiful…They tell the story of how one person’s life could be saved many times over and lived brilliantly, despite the tremendous pain she experienced and the enormous obstacles she encountered.

——The Irish Times

About the Author