Critical Praise

"Direct in style, unsparing though compassionate in observation, subtle in emotion, and occasionally gruesome in humor, Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures follows four medical students from widely different backgrounds as their stories intertwine, as their illusions shatter, and as the meanings of many lives expand around them. The good news is that doctors are human beings. The bad news is that doctors are human beings. The other good news is that this book marks a stunning debut."

—Margaret Atwood, upon introducing Vincent Lam at the Giller Prize ceremony

"Vincent Lam illuminates where strength and resilience reside when body and soul are tested by illness. This artfully crafted, deeply moving, and profoundly intelligent book is a remarkable debut of a new voice in medical literature."

—Jerome Groopman, New York Times bestselling author of How Doctors Think and Recanati Professor of Medicine at Harvard University

"Vincent Lam’s book is amazing, beautiful, and painful. I cannot believe that a writer can emerge, so fully-formed and incisive, with his first book. This guy is a star."

—Sherman Alexie, bestselling author ofThe Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven andFlight

"Some of the best stories in Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures read like journalistic dispatches from the medical front lines, with careful psychological characterizations added. As such, Lam’s book represents a promising demonstration of fiction’s unique power to bring the news that stays news, in Ezra Pound’s formulation, and to allow the reader to see through the eyes of those who experience events firsthand."

—New York Times Book Review