Mark Lanegan will publish a “terrifying” new memoir in December chronicling his battle with Covid-19 earlier this year.
Written in vignettes of prose and poetry, Devil in a Coma will be published on December 14 by White Rabbit, who previously published Lanegan’s best-selling 2020 memoir Sing Backwards and Weep.
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.”
“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,” says publisher Lee Brackstone at White Rabbit. “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.”
Lanegan recently released a video for a new single from Dark Mark Vs. Skeleton Joe, his side project with former Icarus Line frontman Joe Cardamone. Filmed in Ireland, the video features a cameo appearance from Guns N’ Roses bassist Duff McKagan, a long-time friend of Lanegan.
