The Limits of My Language

A beautiful and moving study of depression, in which the author draws on her personal experience of mental illness as well as her deep knowledge of philosophy, to show the issue in a new light Much has been written about the treatment of depression, but relatively little about its meaning. In this strikingly original book, Eva Meijer weaves her own experiences and the insight of thinkers from Freud to Foucault and Woolf into a moving and incisive evocation of the condition. She explores how depression can make us grow out of shape over time, like a twisted tree, how we can sometimes remould ourselves in conversation with others, and how to move on from our darkest thoughts. The Limits of My Language is both a razor-sharp analysis of depression and a steadfast search for the things great and small - from philosophy and art to walking a dog or sitting quietly with a cat - that make our lives worth living.

Eva Meijer is a prizewinning Dutch author, artist, singer, songwriter and philosopher. Bird Cottage, her first novel to be translated into English, was nominated for the BNG and Libris prizes in the Netherlands and is also available from Pushkin Press. Her non-fiction book Animal Languages has also been published in English.