When it was first published in America in 1994, Autobiography of a Face heralded award-winning poet Lucy Grealy's emergence as one of the most compelling writers of her generation. At age nine the writer was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer and had to have a large part of her jaw removed. Written with an unconquerable wit, Grealy's memoir recalls the repercussions of that event; endless reconstructive surgery, the profound emotional trauma of a disrupted adolescence, feelings of rejection and inadequacy in a society obsessed with physical perfection, and the consequences of her own desperate need to be loved. Robbed of her outward beauty as a child, Lucy Grealy turned her tragic misfortune into a book of tremendous lyrical resonance, and a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.