House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson (translated by D.M. Bradford)

“We, nosotros, nosotras: somos sobrevivientes.” Weaving prose poetry, essay, autobiography and photography in mutual contamination, Nicholas Dawson relates his own deep depression, a state never fully gone, always cohabitant. Amidst this persistence, “the body and the pen bring a plural syntax of alternative knowledges into being, one which allows us to know the world better, to know ourselves better, to better love daybreak and this sun obstinately piercing the curtain with its brazen rays.”

House Within a House, in a luminous translation by D.M. Bradford, tells the story of what walls the depressed person in, what keeps them wandering inside, and what finally gets them, somehow, out of the house. The original book, Désormais, ma demeure, received the 2021 Grand Prix du livre de Montréal.

Praise for House Within a House: 

“The searching, confessional, and deeply intelligent voice of House Within a House is a flashlight beam that takes the reader into and through the territory of a depression—but this light lingers, so that at the book’s close we are left with the glow of language naming the overlooked, blinking at its cumulative power.” — Sadiqa de Meijer

“Nicholas Dawson’s House Within a House is about the creative process and all the anguish and hard-fought joy that surrounds it. This book, which so expertly employs philosophical, memoiristic, and visual modes, is deeply human; it seeks to affirm in all of us the part of our personhood that waits for us ‘on the other side of depression’— a task as urgent as any in our current moment. This book will mean a lot to a whole range of readers.” — Billy-Ray Belcourt

“I love this book because I know what it’s like to dwell in the house of depression and how hard it can be to communicate the experience. Nicholas Dawson uses his poetic creativity to describe the house within a house—both the prison of the mind and the look and feel of rugs, floorboards, chair legs, and windowsills. His words and pictures make the dark corners and impasses a little less lonely. And chart paths for getting out of the house.” — Ann Cvetkovich

Press Coverage for House Within a House

House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson by Katia Grubisic — Vallum