麻豆社

A memoir with a difference, subtitled: "Seventeen Brushes With Death".

Award-winning novelist Maggie O'Farrell tells her life story through a series of vignettes of her near-death experiences.

These include:

* A childhood illness she was not expected to survive
* A terrifying encounter on a remote mountain path
* A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital

Her book started out as a private project, a way for O'Farrell to help her young daughter who suffers from a serious immunology disorder, including severe eczema and allergies that can cause anaphylactic shock:

"I've asked myself, when she has been very ill, how do you carry on when death is a daily possibility?"

Omnibus of five parts read by Hattie Morahan.

Abridged and produced by Kirsteen Cameron

First broadcast on 麻豆社 Radio 4 in August 2017.