Fortunate Man

In 1966 John Berger spent three months in the Forest of Dean shadowing an English country GP, John Sassall. Sassall is a fortunate man - his work occupies and fulfils him, he lives amongst the patients he treats, the line between his life and his work is happily blurred. In A Fortunate Man , Berger's text and the photography of Jean Mohr reveal with extraordinary intensity the life of a remarkable man. It is a portrait of one selfless individual and the rural community for which he became the hub. Drawing on psychology, biography and medicine A Fortunate Man is a portrait of sacrifice. It is also a profound exploration of what it means to be a doctor, to serve a community and to heal. With a new introduction by writer and GP, Gavin Francis.

A masterpiece of witness; a three-way meditation on humanity, society and the value of healing

Préface
Berger's exploration of what it means to heal, now inducted into the Canons series over fifty years after its first publication

Auteur
John Berger was born in London in 1926. His seminal Ways of Seeing was one of the most influential books on art in the twentieth century. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding, King and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G. He died, aged ninety, in January 2017. Gavin Francis is an award-winning writer and GP. He is the author of four books of non-fiction, including Adventures in Human Being, which was a Sunday Times bestseller and won the Saltire Scottish Non-Fiction Book of the Year Award, and Empire Antarctica, which won Scottish Book of the Year in the SMIT Awards and was shortlisted for both the Ondaatje and Costa Prizes. He has written for the Guardian, The Times, the New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books. His work is published in eighteen languages. He lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.

@gavinfranc | gavinfrancis.com

Texte du rabat

John Berger was born in London in 1926. His seminal Ways of Seeing was one of the most influential books on art in the 20th century. His many books, innovative in form and far-reaching in their historical and political insight, include To the Wedding, King, and the Booker Prize-winning novel, G. He lived and worked in a small village in the French Alps, the setting for his trilogy Into Their Labours (Pig Earth, Once in Europa and Lilac and Flag). In 2001, his collection of essays The Shape of a Pocket was published, and his Understanding a Photograph, edited by Geoff Dyer, was published in 2013. He died, aged 90, in January 2017.

Jean Mohr is a Swiss documentary photographer. He has worked with the Red Cross, the World Health Organization, and the International Labour Organization.He has produced 26 books of photography, five with his literary collaborator John Berger and one with Edward Said. In 1956 he married Simone Turrettini, a documentary filmmaker. They have two sons and four grandchildren.