'An astounding book, moving between shadow and light with an honesty and self-awareness I found completely compelling. There is a power to being vulnerable, but also a power to fighting back.Whitwham does both these things with eloquence and fire.' —JESSIE BURTON



'Soft Tissue Damage places Whitwham firmly in the tradition of Joyce Carol Oates, Norman Mailer and other novelists who have evoked the blood and spit of the world's most brutal and beautiful sport.' —SAM PARKER, BRITISH GQ



'A compelling, visceral and tender book about grief and loss, life and death, identity and sexuality, written by a daughter, a mother and an aspiring fighter.' —DONALD McRAE



'This is prose that glints with truth.' —NIKITA LALWANI





Soft Tissue Damage tells the story of author ANNA WHITWHAM'S lifelong interest in boxing manifesting itself in the physical act of getting into the ring to fight. From her first tentative training sessions through bruising sparring and building up to a full-blooded fight, Whitwham charts the transformative impact the sport—and all its complicated implications—has on her during a profoundly difficult period dealing with the grief of losing her mother to cancer. Tender, insightful, honest and full of startling and original thought, this is a book that fully examines what the human body is both capable and incapable of, a book that examines what the human body truly means in its capacity for sexuality and violence, love and death, strength and vulnerability.