Time on Fire: My Comedy of Terrors

A visceral knockout of a book, a Kafkaesque Saturday Night Live version of negotiating for your life. Evan Handler is a brilliant writer, unrelenting in his observation of the sacred and the absurd.”
Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club and The Bonesetter’s Daughter

Brutally frank and blisteringly angry, Handler’s story is also the funniest, most enjoyable account of a battle with cancer you’ll ever read. Remarkably open and life-affirming, Handler’s account is as valuable as Norman Cousins’s Anatomy of an Illness and as wonderfully literate as Anatole Broyard’s Intoxicated by My Illness.”
Kirkus Reviews

A raw, thoughtful memoir suspenseful and harrowing moving and admirable.”
New York Times Book Review

Vivid, whip smart Spiked with humor and dizzying clarity, Handler's story is a genuine testament to human will.”
Salon.com

Angry, hilarious, and riveting. A wildly humorous, keenly observed journey. A ceaselessly compassionate vision of the human spirit”
Attribution:
San Francisco Review of Books

A captivating memoir. Entertaining, harrowing and ennobling. Handler speaks with a fresh voice that is entirely riveting.”
Publishers Weekly

Blunt, swaggering, observant, and seductively charming. A great performance.”
Entertainment Weekly

A simply magnificent book, beautifully written, heartbreakingly honest, inspirationally courageous. I could not put it down. It deserves to become a classic.”
Larry Kramer, activist, author, and playwright of The Normal Heart, The Destiny of Me

A harrowing and funny account of a triumphant fight to beat 'incurable' leukemia.”
Chicago Tribune

A truly great book. I cried at the humour and laughed at the pain. You’ll only know what I mean when you read Time on Fire. And you must at all costs.”
Neil Simon, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Lost in Yonkers, The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, Brighton Beach Memoirs, Biloxi Blues

Evan Handler’s Time on Fire is a beautifully told story of one man’s experience with cancer. It is honest, emotional, and most of all a wonderful teacher for all of us who must face adversity at one time or another, either as an individual or family member.”
Dr. Bernie Siegal, author of Love, Medicine and Miracles

Reading this book was like holding a big bunch of life in my hands. I laughed. I cried. I gave thanks to it for reminding me how lucky I am to wake up healthy each day.”
Spalding Gray

Time on Fire, a graceful and important book, reveals Evan Handler to be an accomplished, intelligent writer with a novelist’s eye for detail. That the story is immensely useful doesn’t mean that it isn’t at the same time an exceptional work of art. It is both.”
Tony Kushner, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Angels in America

Time on Fire is at once deeply moving, candid, hilarious, and utterly human. I can’t think of a patient who has come through as he has and lived to tell the tale in so compelling a manner. He is a man of many gifts; writing is one of them.”
Richard Selzer, M.D., author of Raising the Dead, Confessions of a Knife, Mortal Lessons, and Down from Troy

Victory over cancer is not as rare as it once was. This victory is actually funny, irreverent, and beautifully recorded. Seldom is a grim subject such an enjoyable read.”
C. Everett Koop, M.D., former US Surgeon General.