Nervous System

An electrifying novel about illness, displacement, and what holds us together, by the author of Seeing RedElla is an astrophysicist struggling with her doctoral thesis in the “country of the prese ...

An electrifying novel about illness, displacement, and what holds us together, by the author of Seeing RedElla is an astrophysicist struggling with her doctoral thesis in the “country of the present” but she is from the “country of the past,” a place burdened in her memory by both personal and political tragedies. Her partner, El, is a forensic scientist who analyzes the bones of victims of state violence and is recovering from an explosion at a work site that almost killed him. Consumed by writer’s block, Ella finds herself wishing that she would become ill, which would provide time for writi