Narrative medicine has emerged in response to a commodified health care system that places corporate and bureaucratic concerns over the needs of the patient. Generated from a confluence of sources including humanities and medicine, primary care medicine, narratology, and the study of doctor-patient relationships, narrative medicine is medicine practiced with the competence to recognise, absorb, interpret and be moved by the stories of illness. By placing events in temporal order, with beginnings, middles and ends, and by establishing connections among things using metaphor and figural language, narrative medicine helps doctors to recognise patients and diseases, convey knowledge, accompany patients through the ordeals of illness - and according to Rita Charon, can ultimately lead to more humane, ethical and effective healthcare.

Trained in medicine and in literary studies, Rita Charon is a pioneer of and authority on the emerging field of narrative medicine. In this important and long-awaited book she provides a comprehensive and systemic introduction to the conceptual principles underlying narrative medicine, as well as a practical guide for implementing narrative methods in health care. A true milestone in the field, it will interest general readers and experts in medicine, humanities and literary theory.