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  • Published: 5 February 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784706883
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.00

The Language of Kindness

the Costa-Award winning #1 Sunday Times Bestseller





The Sunday Times bestselling memoir about nursing and an urgent call for compassion and kindness

Read Costa Award-winning author Christie Watson's incredible No. 1 Sunday Times bestselling memoir of nursing today.

'It made me cry. It made me think. It made me laugh' Adam Kay, author of This is Going to Hurt and Twas the Nightshift Before Christmas

Christie Watson was a nurse for twenty years. Taking us from birth to death and from A&E to the mortuary, The Language of Kindness is an astounding account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness.

We watch Christie as she nurses a premature baby who has miraculously made it through the night, we stand by her side during her patient's agonising heart-lung transplant, and we hold our breath as she washes the hair of a child fatally injured in a fire, attempting to remove the toxic smell of smoke before the grieving family arrive.

In our most extreme moments, when life is lived most intensely, Christie is with us. She is a guide, mentor and friend. And in these dark days of division and isolationism, she encourages us all to stretch out a hand.

'A powerful insight into the life of nurses' The Times, Books of the Year

'A remarkable book about life and death and so brilliantly written it makes you hold your breath' Ruby Wax

  • Published: 5 February 2019
  • ISBN: 9781784706883
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 352
  • RRP: $26.00

About the author

Christie Watson

Christie Watson is an award-winning, bestselling writer. She has been a nurse for over twenty years.

The Language of Kindness was published in 2018 and was a number one Sunday Times Bestseller. It was a Book of the Year in the Evening Standard, Guardian, New Statesman, The Sunday Times and The Times. It has been translated into 23 languages, and is currently being adapted for theatre and television.

Her first novel, Tiny Sunbirds Far Away, won the Costa First Novel Award and Waverton Good Read Award and her second novel, Where Women Are Kings, also achieved international critical acclaim.

Christie holds an honorary Doctor of Letters for her contribution to nursing and the arts and is Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation. She lives in South London.

www.christiewatsonauthor.co.uk

Also by Christie Watson

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Praise for The Language of Kindness

The Language of Kindness exerts the power of a gripping novel threaded with science, philosophy, history and ethics. Like poetry, it resists paraphrase. A quick summary is out of the question, this brilliant life-changing book has to be experienced.

Martina Evans, Irish Times

Watson evokes the topography of each arm of nursing in vivid detail.

Irish Times

I defy anyone to finish this without weeping and giving thanks for the NHS… An important book that should be on every reading list.

Fanny Blake, Woman & Home

[A] powerful account of her life as a nurse… reading her memoir is a truly uplifting experience.

Jacqueline Wilson, The Week

[Watson] is an elegant, eloquent writer who brings an immediacy to her work. You are right there beside her all the way as she provides a fascinating insight into the trails and triumphs of life in an NHS hospital… a rallying call for kindness and compassion that every one of us should embrace.

Mernie Gilmore, Sunday Express

A nurse’s voice has never really been heard before on this scale. Now’s the time for it to ring loud.

Stylist

Watson writes so well, movingly but sparingly, that the result is a profoundly vivid impression of working in a busy hospital

Jessamy Calk, Daily Telegraph

Through Watson, we are taken on an absorbing, all-seeing tour through the doors of the hospital

Molly Case, Guardian

The Language of Kindness could not be more compelling or more welcome. It's about how we survive, and about the people who help us do so

Roxana Robinson, New York Times Book Review

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The Language of Kindness by Christie Watson

The Language of Kindness is an astounding account of a profession defined by acts of care, compassion and kindness. Learn more - https://www.penguin.com.au/books/the-language-of-kindness-9781784741976

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