Between Two Kingdoms

Between Two Kingdoms: Memoir of a Life Interrupted (2021) is a memoir by Suleika Jaouad detailing her experience with acute myeloid leukemia and how her illness led her on a path to self-discovery. Jaouad is a writer who speaks multiple languages and was raised in several countries including the United States. At age 22 she was diagnosed with leukemia. Her memoir begins as the narrator first notices symptoms of the illness. The book follows Jaouad’s life through diagnosis, treatment, and post-treatment when she completes a road trip around the United States.

In the early 2010s, Jaouad started a blog and then New York Times column “Life, Interrupted,” discussing her illness and treatment. The column also included video interviews of Jaouad’s family and then-boyfriend in which they discuss their questions, decisions, and concerns regarding her illness. The blog and column explored how a person so young processes the possibility of death. The book narrates and reflects on these years in and out of treatment. The book was an instant New York Times best seller. This guide uses the first edition hardback edition published by Random House in 2021.

Plot Summary

Suleika Jaouad is a Princeton University student who speaks three languages and dreams of becoming a foreign correspondent in Northern Africa, but something strange is happening in her body. It’s her senior year of college, and she has an itch that won’t go away. She’s been exhausted and taking hours-long naps while everyone around her is partying and studying and sleeping at odd hours. She rationalizes her symptoms as the result of partying and stress. Suleika graduates from college, and after an internship in New York City, she moves to Paris to be a paralegal. Several days before she leaves for Paris, Suleika meets a man named Will while catching a taxi home from a party. They spend her last three days in New York together in her bedroom and correspond through email and letters when she moves.

The paralegal job demands Suleika be available at all hours of the day, and she continues to feel exhausted. Several months after she arrives, Suleika invites Will to visit her in Paris. He comes for several weeks and decides to join her there permanently. A doctor diagnoses Suleika with anemia, but the iron supplements do not help her exhaustion. On one trip to a doctor’s appointment, she feels especially fragile, gets lost, and falls. By the time she gets to the hospital, the doctor admits her for a week of in-patient care and tests and gives her a diagnosis of burnout syndrome. Suleika takes a month’s leave from her job to recover and begins interviewing for the job she wants: foreign correspondent. A short time later, though, Suleika returns to the hospital, and a nurse tells her that her red blood cell count is so low that she should return to the US immediately for medical care.

Suleika returns to the home of her parents, Anne and Hédi’s, in Saratoga Springs, New York. She believes the visit will be only a few weeks, but after a bone marrow biopsy, Suleika is diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. Will comes to join her in New York, and at age 22 Suleika learns that she will need chemotherapy treatments and a bone marrow transplant. Before she begins chemotherapy, Suleika decides to freeze her eggs to preserve the possibility of having children in the future.

Shortly after Suleika checks into the hospital for chemotherapy, she enters what she terms the “Bubble,” which is an isolation room in Mt. Sinai Hospital’s cancer unit. She receives chemotherapy to lower her cancerous cells or “blast numbers,” and eventually returns home for several months to begin building strength for the bone marrow transplant. The family finds out that her brother Adam is a perfect match for her transplant. Will gets a job in the city and is away from Saratoga Springs for most of the week. As an antidote to isolation, depression, and fear, Suleika, Will, and her parents each commit to working on a project for 100 days. Suleika chooses writing in her journal.

Suleika checks into the bone marrow transplant unit at Sloan Kettering hospital and receives the bone marrow transplant from Adam. The transplant is slow and at times uncertain, but in the end, shows signs of success. Suleika begins maintenance chemotherapy to ensure that the leukemia doesn’t come back. During this time, Suleika uses entries from her 100-day project to write a blog, which she pitches to the New York Times as a column: “Life, Interrupted.” She receives letters and emails from people all over the world. The column connects her with other young people who have cancer, some inside the hospital, including Melissa, Max, and Johnny. They, along with others in the hospital, form a cancer friend and support group.

Following her bone marrow transplant, Suleika and Will live in a cancer home in Manhattan and eventually move into an apartment of their own in the East Village, where they adopt a dog named Oscar. She and Will struggle to stay connected as leukemia forces Will into multiple roles: caregiver, housekeeper, and lover. This puts pressure on their relationship, and they try to identify, treat, and heal the resentments between them. As Suleika receives her last chemotherapy treatment, Will moves out for several months, and after he returns, they decide to make a more permanent break.

Suleika is cancer-free, but cancer still haunts her—she still has her port, and her friend Melissa dies of Ewing sarcoma. Soon after she and Will break up, Suleika begins dating an old friend and musician, Jon, but Suleika feels stuck and considers how she wants to live her life after cancer. She gets her port removed, learns to drive, and plans another 100-day project, a road trip across the country.

On the road trip, Suleika plans to visit over 20 people who wrote in response to her column and a few friends whom she met during her cancer treatments. The people she visits teach Suleika how to live in between illness and health. During her trip, Suleika thinks often about Will and tries to figure out why they broke up. In the end, Suleika learns to accept herself and her past without needing to know all the answers to live in the present.