J A Neto

Those Who Stayed Behind

Overview

• Those Who Stayed Behind by Adam Mars-Jones is a long-waited book that addresses the story of 30 long-term HIV people who have been living with the virus for the past 30 years and more. 
• It retracts the period they were diagnosed and the many thoughts that went through their mind at that moment where being diagnosed was a death sentence: their thoughts, their guilty moments for having survived and how they have gone from there.
• Exploring those many experiences and their coping mechanisms that nowadays are like a distant memory due to the advance in treatments and approaches to the stigma they all had lived in. 
• An important testimony in the first person written by someone who has lived through that period from inside.
• Each story will be displayed on six pages, with one page used exclusively for an image provided by a co-author/interviewee.
• This book can be available/sold at a vast range of stores around the country and worldwide – from big bookshops/outlets such as Waterstones and Foyles to small local bookshops, supermarkets, book clubs and online platforms.

About the author:

Adam Mars-Jones is a writer, arts journalist, film critic and reviewer born in London in 1954 who has worked for The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, The Times Literary Supplement and the London Review of Books, also participating in BBC television’s Newsnight Review.

He is an experienced and knowledgeable writer on the theme, proven through many of his books such as Blind Bitter Happiness, Kid Gloves: A Voyage Round My Father, The Darker Proof: Stories from a Crisis (with Edmund White) and many others collections and essays.

It is an excellent opportunity to fill a gap in the market, not only to show the stories of those who stayed behind but also to give a new perspective to the millions of people who are taking prep (a new treatment still mainly given for gay people in England) or those that are facing the prognostic nowadays.

An appealing book for generations Z, X, and Y, with potential for future generations.

There is also the possibility of creating a biography collection with the individual stories of the participants and others living as HIV positive, with a completer and more compelling story about their life, inspiring the new generation with their strengths and achievements.