Zwischen den Welten

At 22, Suleika Jaouad wanted to conquer the world. She was in love and had moved to Paris to work as a war correspondent. But suddenly, she found herself on a completely different battlefield. It started with an itch in her leg, followed by six-hour naps and overwhelming exhaustion. The diagnosis: leukemia. In an instant, Suleika's life went up in smoke, and she spent the next four years in the hospital, undergoing chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. She documented her fight for life in the award-winning column "Life Interrupted." After 1,500 days, she was considered cured. But how would she manage to return to the world she had left behind? How could she reclaim what had been lost? Together with her terrier Oscar, Suleika embarked on a road trip across the USA. What she learned along the way and in her encounters with others felt like the greatest gift of life. For the boundary between health and illness is permeable for all of us, and most will oscillate between these two realms throughout their lives. Suleika's story is a moving chronicle of a struggle for survival—and a love letter to the power and magic of new beginnings.