Waiting for the Monsoon

Pulitzer-winning New York Times reporter Nordland (The Lovers) details the fallout from being diagnosed with a fatal brain tumor in this devastating yet inspiring memoir. In 2019, when Nordland was in India reporting on New Delhi’s monsoon season, he was incapacitated by a seizure. Medical tests revealed that the culprit was a stage four glioblastoma multiforme—a tumor his doctor grimly nicknamed “The Terminator.” Despite the dire prognosis (only 6% of patients live for five years), Nordland came to consider the news “the best thing that ever happened to me—maybe even if I don’t survive it, but especially if I do.” Through the lens of his looming death, Nordland came to see how the characteristics that made him a professional success—“the old arrogance, the certitude that dominated my every action”—clouded his personal relationships. He set out to make them right, “exulting” in the power of “love and intimacy” for the first time in his life. In flashbacks, he shares how his personality hardened in the first place: his violent father was arrested for kidnapping and abusing other children, and his beloved mother suffered from his dad’s rages. Years into his diagnosis, with no new cancer and occasional, manageable seizures, Nordland writes with palpable gratitude for whatever time he has remaining and provides a stirringly clear-eyed perspective on his own mortality. Readers are sure to be moved by this openhearted account. Agent: Suzanne Gluck, WME. (Jan.)