The Enemy in the Mouth by Joseph Kessel - 1961

The Enemy in the Mouth: An Account of Alcoholics Anonymous by Joseph Kessel

This book is in very good condition. The original dust jacket has experienced some edge wear. Please view all of the photos for the conditions.

About the book:

The author of The Lion and The Magic Touch has found a remarkable and moving subject for his new book. At first puzzled and suspicious of Alcoholics Anonymous, he found his curiosity too strong for his natural embarrassment at putting personal questions to people who proved unexpectedly willing to recall the horror and degradation of the obsessions from which they had been saved. With his passionate interest in human predicaments and his novelist's ear for a good story, M. Kessel became more and more fascinated as he listened to their almost ritual self-revelations. First in France and then in the United States he followed the ramifications of this institution which reaches into the most squalid depths of the Bowery and behind the bars of prisons as well as into the mink-lined homes of the rich, and which is intent on saving people from themselves when all other means have failed. The stories of these otherwise ordinary men and women, the tragedies of those who have succumbed and the heroism of those, who, having been rescued, are devoting their lives to rescuing others, would provide plots for a dozen novels. This book is not only as readable, enthralling and moving as any novel, it is also a true story which is all the more inspiring because it is written by an outside observer, by nature agnostic and sceptical of simple moral panaceas.