On Another Planet They Can Save Me by Lieke Marsman review - an astonishing memoir of terminal illness
A review of 'On Another Planet They Can Save Me,' an astonishing and life-affirming memoir by the late Dutch poet Lieke Marsman about facing terminal cartilage cancer. Published four months after her death at age 37, the book explores the dissolution of rational assumptions under the threat of imminent death.
Why it matters
Offers profound literary and philosophical insight into mortality, chronic illness, and the psychological impact of terminal diagnoses.
Lieke Marsman. Photograph: Tom Cornelissen Lieke Marsman. Photograph: Tom Cornelissen Book of the day Autobiography and memoir Review On Another Planet They Can Save Me by Lieke Marsman review – an astonishing memoir of terminal illness Published four months after her death, the poet’s reflections on mortality are both agonising and profoundly life-affirming
Prefer the Guardian on Google T here are no atheists in foxholes, goes the saying, and indeed social scientists and evolutionary biologists have argued that the experience of war or conflict drives religious belief; in 2019, Joseph Henrich and others surveyed almost 2,000 people in three post-conflict societies – Uganda, Sierra Leone and Tajikistan – and concluded that their experience of conflict had prompted them to participate in Christian and Muslim rituals and groups. Atheism, it seems, may be as fragile as faith.
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