In the Valley of Tears
In the Valley of Tears
At age 35, a young psychiatrist is diagnosed with lymphoma, suddenly finding himself on the “other” side with his patients. In the Valley of Tears traces his inner journey from illness to remission, from an imminent death to a new life.
“I floated over a void of fullness and inexistence. I was still alive, whole—entirely whole, not in pieces—but I was no longer at the center of my being; instead, there was a vacuum full of something without sensory content; a light without light; a presence without body; a consciousness without memory, without emotion. I felt haunted by an unnamable internal unity cutting me off from everything around me. I was unbelievably untouched.”
Patrick Autréaux was born in France.
While studying medicine and cultural anthropology, he published poetry and reviews of contemporary art. In 2006, after practicing as an emergency-room psychiatrist, he decided to dedicate himself entirely to writing.
The view of illness as an inner experience informs his first cycle of writing, ending with Se survivre (Verdier). He is the author of Dans la vallée des larmes (translated in English at UIT Books, 2019), Soigner, and Le Dedans des choses, all novels published by Gallimard. And recently of Pussyboy (Verdier), novel about an erotic passion.
He also published in 2015 Les Irréguliers (Gallimard), a novel on illegal immigrant in France. His “standing poem” Le Grand Vivant (Verdier) was produced at the 2015 Avignon festival (“in”). In 2017, he published La Voix écrite (Verdier) a narrative between literature and medicine. He was nominated for the Prix Décembre and Prix Femina for his novel Quand la parole attend la nuit (Verdier, 2019).
Writer-in-residence at Boston university in 2018-2019 and visiting scholar at MIT in 2018, he has taught his seminar Through a writer’s eye (trauma and literature). In 2022, he was a fellow at the Dora Maar house (Nancy Brown Negley foundation). He’s affiliated with the MIT French+.