Shortly after learning they would become the parents of twins, the physician-writer Amit Majmudar and his wife received a devastating in utero diagnosis: one of the twins had a potentially fatal congenital heart defect.
Written in the form of an extended letter, Twin A recounts the epic story of the open-heart surgeries, complications, and prolonged recoveries that Majmudar’s son survived in infancy and early childhood. But the narrative turns into something much richer and more expansive than the mere description of a surgical history. Thanks to Majmudar’s ample gifts as a wordsmith, medical and scientific information frequently give way to original poetry and fables, family history, and a series of evocative religious and philosophical reflections about matters of life and death.
The result is a fresh, captivating exploration of the events that transform his son and everyone around him. Drawing strength and beauty from catastrophe, Majmudar’s Twin A creates a moving portrait of a family’s love and a child’s extraordinary resilience.
Содержание
1. BEFORE YOU
You are Born
Who We Were Before We Were Yours
Ultrasound
Numerology, Embryology
How You Grew Your Heart
Needles
Repeating the Echo
The Parting of the Hair
Deliverance
2. HANDS
Twinned Poems
Hands
Dewdrop and Rosebush
The First Surgery
Dr. Z
Homecoming
How We Coasted
Baby Boy Blue
The Hands of Hani Hennein
3. REMAKING YOU
The Second Surgery
Your Open Chest
Reawakening
Pain
Ativan
An Omen
Kawasaki Syndrome
The Odds
How Could All This Fit in a Single Year?
4. COMPLICATIONS
Going Under
Epic Hero
Your Blue Horse
Dr. K
“There is Nothing There”
Dead Space
Hope
Boston Children’s
Timing
5. YOUR PEOPLE
Motherhood
Ami’s Telling
Twin B
Three
The Fire in the Heart
The Smudge of Kohl
Tools
“My One Thing”
I Bow to You[GW1]
Acknowledgments
[GW1]Will there be an author’s note or acknowledgments at the end?
Об авторе
Amit Majmudar is a poet, novelist, essayist, translator, and the former first Poet Laureate of Ohio. Among his books are the poetry collection What He Did in Solitary and Black Avatar and Other Essays. He has also published a translation from the Sanskrit, Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary. He works as a diagnostic and nuclear radiologist and lives in Westerville, Ohio with his wife and three children.