Reading to Stay Alive: Tolstoy, Hopkins and the Dilemma of Existence

This book explores how literary reading can enable people considering suicide to stay alive. Written by an academic general practitioner with longstanding expertise in mental health, the book is grounded in the lived experience of patients, intertwined with perspectives from social psychology and moral philosophy. At its heart are reflective descriptions of the author’s encounters with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, and the Terrible Sonnets of Gerard Manley Hopkins, illuminating the therapeutic potential of recursive interactions between literature and experience.