Body Songs
A Memoir of Long Covid, Chronic Illness, and Unconventional Recovery
Failed to add items
Sorry, we are unable to add the item because your shopping cart is already at capacity.
Add to basket failed.
Please try again later
Add to wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Remove from wishlist failed.
Please try again later
Adding to library failed
Please try again
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Listen with a free trial
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection - including bestsellers and new releases.
Unlimited access to our all-you-can-listen catalogue of 15K+ audiobooks and podcasts
Access exclusive sales and deals.
£8.99/month after 30 days. Renews automatically.
Body Songs
Narrated by:
Emma Zimmerman
Pre-order Now for £14.12
-
Narrated by:
-
Emma Zimmerman
-
By:
-
Emma Zimmerman
In 2022, Emma Zimmerman contracted COVID-19. What she expected to be a mild illness instead unraveled into something far more disorienting: a cascade of persistent, inexplicable symptoms that reshaped her days and her sense of self. Almost overnight, she found herself living inside the reality of chronic illness—adrift in a body she no longer recognized.
What followed was a year of searching. Emma moved through doctors’ offices and online forums, through diagnoses and dead ends, through the uneasy terrain between conventional medicine and alternative treatments. Along the way, she began to ask harder questions—not only about what was happening to her body, but about how we understand illness in the first place.
Body Songs traces that journey. Anchored in Emma’s own experience with long Covid and enriched by conversations with clinicians, researchers, and fellow patients, it is less a guide than a reckoning: with the limits of certainty, the porous boundary between mind and body, and the stories we tell about what makes us sick—or well.
At the heart of the book is Emma’s encounter with the neuroplastic approach—a treatment model predicated on the understanding that the brain itself can shape the body’s experience of pain and illness. But rather than offering easy answers, she approaches this terrain with curiosity and care, weaving together personal narrative with the voices and perspectives she gathers along the way.
Vivid, lyrical, and deeply felt, Body Songs is an exploration of what it means to live inside a body in flux. It is a story of disruption and return, of doubt and attention, and of the quiet, radical act of learning to listen—to the body, to the mind, and to the meanings we make of both.
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
Critic reviews
Praise for Body Songs
"The word 'transformative' gets tossed around so much that when one actually encounters a book that foundationally transforms our understanding of repair, COVID, and books, one is absolutely stunned. Emma Zimmerman has offered her body as witness and wonder in Body Songs, and we are so so lucky."
—Kiese Laymon, bestselling author of Heavy and Long Division
"Body Songs transfixed me from page one. Emma Zimmerman writes with warm elegance and haunting urgency of a subject too often ignored in both literature and medicine: Chronic illness. Anyone whose life has been eroded by symptoms that won't go away--and defy explanation--will find tremendous comfort and insight in this absorbing, beautifully written debut."
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age
"Emma Zimmerman’s Body Songs unfolds with the mystery and momentum of a novel, beginning with a primal search: to be well, to stay well, to recover what was lost. An exquisite inquiry into the unknown and the complexities of being alive. I couldn’t put it down."
—Paul Lisicky, author of Song So Wild and Blue and Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
“In Body Songs, Emma Zimmerman accomplishes something extraordinary: she transforms the bewilderment of chronic illness into a profound inquiry about embodiment itself. Wise beyond her years, Zimmerman refuses easy answers, writing instead toward complexity, tenderness, and wonder. The result is a luminous, deeply humane book that reminds us our bodies are not machines to be fixed, but stories to be listened to. A profound debut from a remarkable new voice, Body Songs left me reading more slowly, listening more carefully, and thinking differently about what it means to inhabit a body.”
—Mira Ptacin, author of Poor Your Soul and The In-Betweens
"Part mystery, part elegy, part prayer – Body Songs traces Zimmerman’s journey from illness to health and collapses those categories in the process. Zimmerman also investigates the wellness complex, including the social and institutional forces that lead to unequal, incomplete care. Rather than solutions, she leaves us with incisive questions, deepened by conversations with patients and experts. Body Songs shows that being well is not just about being symptom-free, but about listening to your body and the world."
—Kristin Collier, author of What Debt Demands
"The word 'transformative' gets tossed around so much that when one actually encounters a book that foundationally transforms our understanding of repair, COVID, and books, one is absolutely stunned. Emma Zimmerman has offered her body as witness and wonder in Body Songs, and we are so so lucky."
—Kiese Laymon, bestselling author of Heavy and Long Division
"Body Songs transfixed me from page one. Emma Zimmerman writes with warm elegance and haunting urgency of a subject too often ignored in both literature and medicine: Chronic illness. Anyone whose life has been eroded by symptoms that won't go away--and defy explanation--will find tremendous comfort and insight in this absorbing, beautifully written debut."
—Joanna Rakoff, author of My Salinger Year and A Fortunate Age
"Emma Zimmerman’s Body Songs unfolds with the mystery and momentum of a novel, beginning with a primal search: to be well, to stay well, to recover what was lost. An exquisite inquiry into the unknown and the complexities of being alive. I couldn’t put it down."
—Paul Lisicky, author of Song So Wild and Blue and Later: My Life at the Edge of the World
“In Body Songs, Emma Zimmerman accomplishes something extraordinary: she transforms the bewilderment of chronic illness into a profound inquiry about embodiment itself. Wise beyond her years, Zimmerman refuses easy answers, writing instead toward complexity, tenderness, and wonder. The result is a luminous, deeply humane book that reminds us our bodies are not machines to be fixed, but stories to be listened to. A profound debut from a remarkable new voice, Body Songs left me reading more slowly, listening more carefully, and thinking differently about what it means to inhabit a body.”
—Mira Ptacin, author of Poor Your Soul and The In-Betweens
"Part mystery, part elegy, part prayer – Body Songs traces Zimmerman’s journey from illness to health and collapses those categories in the process. Zimmerman also investigates the wellness complex, including the social and institutional forces that lead to unequal, incomplete care. Rather than solutions, she leaves us with incisive questions, deepened by conversations with patients and experts. Body Songs shows that being well is not just about being symptom-free, but about listening to your body and the world."
—Kristin Collier, author of What Debt Demands
No reviews yet