Cytomegalovirus (Fordham University Press)

By the time of his death, Herve Guibert (1955-1991) had become a singular literary voice on the impact of AIDS in France. He was prolific. His oeuvre contained some twenty novels, including A l'ami qui ne m'a pas sauve la vie (To the Friend Who Did Not Save My Life) and Le protocolecompassionnel (The Compassion Protocol). He was 36 years old. In Cytomegalovirus, Guibert offers an autobiographical narrative of the everyday moments of his hospitalization due to complications of AIDS. In this, one of Guibert's last works, the writer presents his struggle with the disease in terms that are unrehearsed and deeply human. Cytomegalovirus is spare, biting, and anguished. Guibert writes through the minutiae of living and of death--as a quality of invention, of melancholy, of small victories in the face of greater threats--at the moment when his sight (and life) is eclipsed. If Cytomegalovirus is a self-portrait, it is one that is at once devastating and aware."