A darkly comic and moving memoir on what it means to be human in a world where nothing is certain, from the award-winning Oxford professor.

‘A book that will stay with you for life’
NATALIE HAYNES

‘The best book about multiple sclerosis’
THE TIMES

We all have trapdoors in our lives. Sometimes we jump off just in time... But sometimes we are unlucky. My own trapdoor was hidden in the consulting room of an Oxford neurologist.

When the trapdoor opened for Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, he plummeted into a world of MRI scans, a disobedient body and the crushing unpredictability of a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. But, as he explores in Metamorphosis, his fall also did something else. It took him deep into his own mind: his hopes, his fears, his loves and losses, and the books that would sustain, inform and nourish him as his life began to transform in ways he could never have imagined.

‘A pitch-perfect memoir… touchingly honest and darkly funny’
JACQUELINE WILSON

‘An outstanding feat… Riveting’
SUNDAY TIMES

Metamorphosis is the best book I have read about multiple sclerosis, and that is because it is about so much more... It is simply a beautiful piece of writing. * The Times *
A pitch-perfect memoir: stylish, erudite, touchingly honest and darkly funny. -- Jacqueline Wilson, author of The Story of Tracy Beaker
An outstanding feat of bravery and brio... A buoyantly written, piercingly perceptive book. * Sunday Times *
A beautiful and devastating portrayal of a life-changing diagnosis... It is what the best writing should be: a book that will stay with you for life. -- Natalie Haynes, author of A Thousand Ships
The writing is all elegance and wit. * The Times, *2023's Top 50 Non-Fiction Books* *
An account of living with multiple sclerosis that is both deeply literary and painfully honest as it charts his journey into ill health. * Financial Times, *Summer Reads of 2023* *
Heartening and unexpectedly gripping... An immensely powerful book... It persuasively builds the case for the ability of stories to offer hope and solace; to help us become ourselves, over and over, even in extremis. * Spectator *
Written by an entertaining storyteller and offers a rare insight into a situation that few people will have to face, but that it does us good to contemplate. * Mail on Sunday *
While this book deals with distress, physical pain and uncertainty, its wry humour and lightness of touch make it anything but a misery memoir... Superb. * Times Literary Supplement *
Douglas-Fairhurst has written a memoir that is not miserable. It's funny and raw... Magical: pages speed by, fuelled by the author's formidable intellect. * Financial Times, *Book of the Week* *

Robert Douglas-Fairhurst is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Magdalen College. His books include Becoming Dickens, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, The Story of Alice, which was shortlisted for the Costa Biography Award, and Metamorphosis. He writes regularly for publications including The Times, the Literary Review and the Spectator. Radio and television appearances include Start the Week and The Culture Show and he has also acted as the historical consultant on TV adaptations of Jane Eyre, Emma, Great Expectations, the BBC drama series Dickensian and both of the Enola Holmes feature films for Netflix. He has judged the Booker Prize and the Baillie Gifford Prize, and in 2015 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.