Surviving Cells

Brian Willemswas born in Minnesota, and now lives and works in Croatia, teaching literature at the University of Split and serving as director of its Studia Mediterranea centre. Brian's poetry and prose have appeared in The Antioch Review, Poetry Salzburg Review, Things Magazine, Prague Literary Review and elsewhere. He is the author of the experimental novella Henry, Henry (2016), as well as several academic books, most recently Sham Ruins: A User's Guide (2022), and is co-editor, with Nicol Barria-Asenjo and Slavoj Zizek, of Global Manifestos for the 21st Century,with a foreword by Yanis Varoufakis (2023). He translates from Croatianinto English, including work by Jurica Pavicic, and Luka Bekavac's Gallery of Fine Arts in Osijek: Studies, Ruins. He is co-editor of LOOK Editions, and has been a guest lecturer in the UK, USA, the Middle East, and continental Europe. The Surviving Cells is his first novel.

'At the heart of Brian Willems's novel The Surviving Cells lies cancer, a disease that drives the narrative like an invisible force: turning fates, shifting perspectives, erasing boundaries, and transforming relationships. The doctor becomes the patient and time, once abundant, suddenly grows scarce. The barrier between the one who heals and the one who suffers rises only to disappear. Through a series of such reversals, the narrator guides the story with surgical precision, cutting through illusions to reach the very core. But cancer is not merely a disease of the body. It is also a metaphor: a mutation spreading through society, from a repressive system that determines the fate of migrants to the conversion of terminal conditions into profit. Do we have any control at all, even over our own bodies? Does our life depend on a chain of fragile, invisible decisions? This novel offers no simple answers. Instead, it leads us through the labyrinth of the fragile body, posing questions that feel almost terminal themselves. In a world where unpredictability and precarity are its only constants, literature finds what medicine cannot: a space beyond cells. Although cancer fuels this story, it does not have the final word.' - Masa Kolanovic, winner of the European Prize for Literature and author of Underground Barbie'In The Surviving Cells, bureaucratic bullshit will pollute the best of intentions. But love is everywhere as well, sprouting like an invasive plant.Brian Willems' close tracking of a vivid consciousness that (without warning) begins to lose access to external reality is both heartbreakingand stunning. I cannot stop thinking about this book.' - Dodie Bellamy, author of When the Sick Rule the World'The Surviving Cellsis a highly personal, detailed, and meticulous novel about the unbearable complexity of care. It reminds us that survival is never simple, nor the risks we take when helping others to do so. After reading it, you'll never see medicine - or love - the same way again.' - Susan Finlay, author of The Jacques Lacan Foundation'A taut and utterly unflinching examination of the drivers behind modern medical research, and the multitude of ways us humans respond to the often brutal experience of serious illness. Realistic, compelling, and unsparingly honest.' - Lori Inglis Hall, author of The Shock of the Light'The Surviving Cellshaunted me long after I finished reading it, returning me to my uneasy body, knowing I will be death's subject, if not now, then when... It is a book about bodies, inside and out, container and contained; about the border line between the heart of one's being and the strangeness of each decentred subject - that which is radically unassimilable. It asks how we might live and how we might die when confronted with a finite limit, the ethics of assuming mortality. It is also dryly witty, like Ana herself. I am re-reading it already.' - Sharon Kivland, author of These Are Addressed to You'The intricacies of The Surviving Cells feel simultaneously painful and unnerving while its cinematic jump cuts are compelling and perhaps liberating. "What is actually scary about the highway is that parts of it are familiar, like the names of the exits, but the thing itself is strange."' - Rachel Cattle, author of Uh Huh Her'Different and compelling.' – Sara Lawrence, 'Fabulous, compelling and wonderful... best debuts out this month', Daily Mail'[A story] not only about the ultimate powerlessness of medicine in face of mortality, but a beautiful and deeply moving piece about the ways in which people see themselves and are seen by others ... This is a serious novel about medical ethics, about the ways in which we live and the ways in which we die. It is emotionally potent, full of rich characterisation and beautiful descriptions of personhood and thought.' - Scott Manley Hadley, Triumph of the Now