Stephen Bernard

Author

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Stephen Bernard

Books

Agent: Caroline Dawnay
Associate Agent: Kat Aitken

Books

Stephen Bernard is an internationally award- winning essayist, editor, and bibliographer at the University of Oxford. He is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the Royal Society of Arts, and the Royal Historical Society. He occasionally writes for the Times Literary Supplement.

Paper Cuts (2018), published by Jonathan Cape, is his first and only experiment in autobiography.

Non-Fiction

Publication DetailsNotes
2018

Jonathan Cape

‘I have a small line of red dots on the back of my left hand, where the needle goes in. I have had hundreds of ketamine injections, more than anyone else, perhaps. The needle goes in, and the truth comes out. Sometimes I am a child again. Sometimes I have the innocence of a child, but I am not innocent. I know too much. I have known too much.’

With Paper Cuts, Stephen Bernard boldly tests the bounds of what a memoir can achieve. Living through the trauma of childhood abuse and mental illness, he writes to escape and confront, to accuse and explain.

Each morning when he wakes, Stephen Bernard must literally reconstruct his self: every night he writes himself a letter to be read the next day. The fractured, intensely personal narrative of Paper Cuts follows a single day in his life as he navigates a course through the effects of mania, medication and memories. The result is painful, unique and inspiring.