White Rabbit signs Lanegan's 'terrifying' account of Covid-19 fight

White Rabbit has signed a new memoir by Mark Lanegan, described as a “terrifying account” of Covid-19, which left the songwriter slipping in and out of a coma.

Written in vignettes of prose and poetry, Devil in a Coma will be published on 14th December 2021. Lee Brackstone, publisher of White Rabbit, acquired world rights from the author.

The synopsis states: “One blindingly bright morning in Ireland in March 2021 Mark Lanegan woke up and walked into the kitchen to pour himself a cup of coffee. Having gone completely deaf during the illness that had been slowly devouring his sick body, he found himself floored with cracked ribs, unable to breathe. His body, burdened with a gigantic dose of Covid-19, was quickly taken to Kerry Hospital with little hope of survival. 

“Slipping in and out of a coma, Lanegan’s mind and body were left oscillating between life and death, unable to walk or function for several months. As his situation becomes more intolerable over the course of that bleakest of springs he is assaulted by nightmares, visions and regrets about a life lived on the edge of chaos and disorder. He is prompted to consider his predicament and how, in his sixth decade, his lifelong battle with mortality has led to this final banal encounter with a disease that has done for millions, when he has apparently been cheating death for his whole existence.”

Brackstone said: “Devil in a Coma is the latest work by a master of many forms, who has once again made art out of suffering and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Unsparing—of both himself and the world we now find ourselves in—and grotesquely compelling, this book could not be more visceral and intense if it were written in blood.” 

Devil in a Coma follows the success of Lanegan’s Sunday Times-bestselling memoir Sing Backwards and Weep, published in 2020 by White Rabbit.