On Another Planet They Can Save Me

A brilliant, life-affirming and expansive meditation on mortality and the courage to imagine the unknown.

When everything here feels unexpectedly hopeless, I'd like to think: On another planet they can save me.

Faced with a terminal cancer diagnosis, poet Lieke Marsman embarks on an intellectual expedition to challenge the limits of the rational, secular worldview she once trusted, in an urgent quest for hope. In essays, poems and diary entries, she travels deep both into - and wildly beyond - herself. From ancient Greek myths to quantum mechanics, from UFOs to Wittgenstein, she traverses across the ages and disciplines to chart an unflinching, deeply philosophical journey in search of meaning in a world that offers none.

On Another Planet They Can Save Me is a defiant celebration of the human spirit's refusal to surrender to despair - and a rallying cry for the power of wonder, even in the face of death.